O’HORTEN

Norway, 2007, 90 minutes, Colour.
Baard Owe.
Directed by Bent Hamer.

Watching O' Horten is quite an agreeable experience. We are taken to Sweden in the winter season – and the autumn of the life of rail engineer and train driver, Odd Horten. In fact, the film is really a warm portrait of this man as he comes to the end of his career on the trains and begins his retirement. Baard Owe looks and acts the part perfectly.

The film is really a series of episodes which are not really essential to the narrative drive of the film. Each is, in its own way, entertaining, fragments of this portrait of Odd. A silent and retiring man, we see him driving the train, a trbitute from his fellow-workers, being unable to get into a building for further celebration and going up the fire escape and through an apartment only to find a little boy who shows him his toys and wants him to stay until he goes to sleep. The Odd nods off and has to surreptitiously get out of the apartment. It's that kind of film.

He goes to a bar regularly for a drink, meets the widow of his tobacconist, meets a man (via some funny sequences of his visiting an airport and being detained) who wants to buy his boat. A kind man, he picks up a man lying in the street and takes him home where he learns he has been a diplomat in Africa and has a wilder younger brother, an inventor. He also claims the gift of being able to drive a car blindfolded and yet see. This has an unexpected consequence and leads to the end of the film with Odd going to see his landlady and really settle into retirement.

Bent Hamer's films have been as diverse as Kitchen Stories and the Charles Bukowski story, Factotum, with Matt Dillon. He has a gently wry sense of humour as well as a sympathetic feel for ordinary people.

1.An enjoyable experience? Details of a way of life in Norway? Portrait of a retiring man? The overall effect? Humour, empathy, pathos?

2.The Norwegian settings, the city, the railway, the stations, apartments, bars, shops? The airport? Ordinary places for ordinary activities? The musical score?

3.The opening, O’ Horten in his train, the credits and the travel through the tunnels and the snow? Creating atmosphere?

4.The portrait of Odd? In the train, his age, appearance? His discussions with his fellow workers? A retiring personality? His last trips? Going to the boarding house, his friendship with the manager? Her discussions with him about his retirement? The party, his awkwardness, the fellow drivers, the speech, the toast, the presentation? His going to get some cigarettes? Being locked out of the house? Climbing up the fire escape, getting into the apartment, the encounter with the little boy, his toys, having to watch until he went to sleep, his nodding off himself, the morning, having to get out the window? The effect on him? The widow of the tobacconist, their discussions and memories? In the bar, by himself, his friendship with the manager, the ups and downs of activities in the bar? The man who was to buy his boat, the phone calls, going to the airport, the funny visuals of him at the airport, on the vehicles, his being detained, searched? The finding of the man in the street, taking him to his home, the discussions and the drink, the man and his artwork, the diplomat in Africa, the fact that he could drive while blindfolded? His stories about his brother? The drive through the night, stopping at the lights, his dying? Odd taking the dog? Going back to the house, encountering the brother, finding that the dead man was schizophrenic? His going back to the station, with the dog? His going back to see the manager of the boarding house? His being ready to settle into retirement? A sympathetic portrait? (Adding the scene where he went to the sauna and saw the couple in the swimming pool?)

5.The other characters: the sketches of the wife of the tobacconist, the little boy, the president of the drivers, the other drivers, the man in the street, his eccentricities, his being schizophrenic, telling the story of his brother, meeting the actual brother? The landlady and the end? The build-up of these ordinary characters helping to illustrate Odd’s life?

6.The overall effect of a portrait of a man in his later sixties, his life and achievement, its ordinariness, his going to see his mother and her loss of memory? His own old age, the possibilities for retirement?