Review of O'Horten (2007) by Dfw F — 04 Oct 2009

O'Horten (2007) "La nouvelle vie de Monsieur Horten" - France. Wiki state that director Bent Hamer is "acclaimed" but he has only made 3 movies. This is not a great movie or masterpiece but still a very interesting film from Norway.

Its a comedy and slice of life look at a man who has been a train engineer for 40 years and is retiring. The night of his retirement he becomes entwined in series of incidents outside the normal scope of his life.

Odd Horten (Bard Owe) - "Odd" is a common Norwegian name - is a 67-year-old train engineer at the end of his career. He is timid and a train engineer living by TIMETABLES. His life timetable gets out of whack.

It is a comedy but really delves into kind of existential journey at the end of his retirement. His journey through these odd incidents is somewhat reminiscent of the boys' journey in Satyricon and also similar to the film with odd incidents After Hours.

These incidents are strung together with no real time frame or chronology. While he is timid and a loner most of his life these incidences connect him with lives strangers he meets who have lives stranger than his own, Horten discovers a gift for attracting the unexpected he never knew he had.

He also manages to reconnect, however tentatively, to humanity, and realizes that life can be a strange and satisfying journey if we give it half a chance. The film is comical with fantasy and some melancholy and a bit odd.

Also has a eccentric score by Norwegian artist Kaada. The production and cinematography were excellent The movie really succeeds on most levels and is really pretty entertaining. Not a great movie but a success .

For all it's potential melancholy, though, "O' Horten" is a tremendously cheerful movie. The jokes are frequent and funny, tremendously droll. Odd and the rest of the characters are tremendously charming, and the message is ultimately pretty upbeat.

It's a real treat. Three or four stars.