Dir. Bent Hamer, Norway, 2009, 90 mins
Cast:
Baard Owe, Espen Skjonberg, Ghita Norby, Henny Moan
Review by
Philippa Bradnock
Odd Horten (Owe) is a retiring train driver, whose life we follow over a few days, as he tries to make sense of his new status in the world. He gradually relinquishes the marks of his previous life – the badges and epaulettes of the railway driver – and has a series of encounters with acquaintances and strangers.
Hamer's 2003 film Kitchen Stories relished the quiet visual joke. At the main characters' first meeting we watch one sitting in his kitchen and only in the reverse shot do we realise that the other, a researcher arrived to observe him, is perched on a ridiculously high observation chair in the corner, clipboard at the ready. It is a great visual reveal, the taciturn farmer under siege from his officious unwanted guest.
O'Horten too has many such absurdist gems. A portly man in a shiny sky-blue ski jacket bursts into Horten's dull-hued local bar. A man slips in silent slapstick on ice outside the shop where Horten browses for a new pipe. Horten's colleagues' enact an elaborate railway salute. Hamer loves the incidental, the background, while the foreground is quiet and slow, so that we can savour these pieces of other lives. His careful, symmetrical framing and love of the texture of a wallpaper or the light from a pleated lampshade almost approaches Wes Anderson's fascination with the set as a player in the film.
O'Horten is a gentle observation of a turning point in its hero's life, as Horten changes from a predictable, apparently dour, train engineer to a man who swims naked and tries out borrowed high heels. The film has a sombre feel, and death infiltrates all Horten's encounters, from his browse for a new pipe to his encounter with an extroverted ex-diplomat and the film's ambiguous final scenes. But where Kitchen Stories built a warmth and empathy for its characters through their uneasy truces, O'Horten never quite lets us know what Horten is about. He visits his mother, an ex-ski-jumper, in a care home; tries to sell his boat, resulting in a humiliating and exhausting trek around the airport to find the potential buyer; and rides with a blindfolded eccentric who insists he can see without his eyes. All these encounters are interesting, amusing and beautifully observed. But Horten's inner life remains obscure and it is unclear whether he has secretly always behaved like this or whether retirement has unleashed a more experimental side of his nature.
There is a lot to enjoy in Hamer's new film. It is well-judged, beautiful, funny and sad. O'Horten is much much more than the sum of its vignettes, but ultimately its central character remains a puzzle, rather than a friend.
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