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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with DAN CARRIER
Published:7 May 2009

Odd Horten, played by Bard Owe, in O’Horten

Norway’s films are so cool!

O'HORTEN
Directed by Bent Hamer
Certificate 15

NORDIC films are fast developing a reputation for super-odd tales featuring interesting characters who are found filed under “odd-ball”.
The Norwegian film industry has carved a reputation for gentle, clever work and this offering by writer/ producer/director Bent Hamer raises the bar yet further.
Shot in shady illumination which occasionally cast an ethereal light across the players, it tells the story of Odd Horten, a railway engineer who has taken the same train along the same rails every day for years. But when retirement looms large, he has to consider what happens next. Having had a daily routine laid out like the timetable of his journey, the twilight years offer new challenges.
Things begin to go awry when his train leaves the station without him and he embarks on a series of misadventures, featuring a ride in a car driven by a blindfolded man and various other skits involving red high heels, ski jumping and selling his prized boat.
This film is at times rather dark, conjuring up questions of what’s it all about anyway, yet it is also a celebration of the human condition, of getting on with things, and enjoying taking the odd unnecessary risk. Hamer has achieved critical success. He was placed in the director’s chair for a 2005 adaptation of Beat poet Charles Bukowski’s semi-autobiographical piece Factotum, which featured Matt Dillon and Marisa Tomei, and this story of an achingly ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances leads on nicely from Bukowski’s study of the working man.
Totally bizarre, very Nordic in its humour, and like nothing else you will see on release this year.

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