O’Horten is one of the most beautifully photographed films
I’ve seen all year, and it’s ceaselessly entertaining as
well—which is a bit of a shock, considering it’s a Norwegian
movie about a reticent, 67-year-old railroad engineer. I mean, don’t
get me wrong; listening to Norwegians not talk about the railroad is
one of my favorite things, but I wasn’t sure it could sustain a
90-minute film.

But it does. Writer/director Bent Hamer, whose name makes him sound
like he’s the star of a Norwegian fetish-porn video, made the
reasonably decent Factotum a few years ago, but there’s nothing
in that film to prepare one for the visual delights of O’Horten.
Every shot is perfectly framed. Swathes of gray and white are
punctuated by tiny bits of color. And within the frame, the movement is
perfectly placed to create the exact effect that would have occurred if
Edward Hopper had made looping, animated .gifs instead of
paintings.

Often, a single figure will move against the stark background,
creating a weird, comic effect that is nonetheless compositionally
strong throughout the movement. At one point, the railman, Odd Horten,
is clinging desperately to a lamppost during an ice storm. The street
in front of him slopes down at a dangerous angle. A man lying down
beneath a toppled motorcycle slides smoothly down the street, coming
for a moment under the glare of the lamplight before fading out of the
frame.

It’s something of a metaphor for Horten’s life: He’s always wanted
to be a ski-jumper, just like his mom and, apparently, 96 percent of
Norwegians. However, he was too frightened, and instead clung to his
job as a railman, his position as a bachelor, and his favorite
pipe.

But then he retires, and strange things occur around him. He’s
accidentally locked out of his retirement party, and in trying to
return, climbs through the window of a random apartment where he’s held
hostage by a 7-year-old boy. He attempts to sell his boat, and winds up
standing alone on the runway at the Oslo airport, where he’s found by
security and then searched in a most personal manner. And somehow, he
finds himself in the passenger seat as an eccentric inventor drives
blindfolded through icy city streets.

The quiet lead performance by Baard Owe is perfect. It’s nice to see
an older man get a chance to act where he’s not simply a comic
exaggeration of the zany senior citizen. It’d be even nicer if older
women actors got some roles like that, but then it’d also be nice if
all the world’s peoples would lay down their weapons and just hug each
other.

So meanwhile, there’s this to enjoy. Plus—and this is a real
departure from American films—Odd has something of a crush on a
woman, and the woman he has feelings for is not young enough to be his
second wife’s daughter. Instead, she’s his age, and even looks like
she’s his age, in a respectable, aging-gracefully sort of way. Even
weirder, she’s played by an actress who is actually the same age as the
actor who plays Odd. Which is freakish, because, as an American, I
expect all older women in movies to look like either young women
wearing old-lady makeup, or some Dr. Frankenstein version of an undead
bikini model. And yet, Henny Moan, who plays Odd’s love interest, Svea,
just looks like a healthy human being. Which is cheering.

But this is mostly a film about Odd and his encounters with other
men—weird, Norwegian men who sit in the middle of carefully
framed scenes and sip soup or beer and say little. In that way,
O’Horten is most reminiscent of the films of Aki
Kaurismäki, but it replenishes Kaurismäki’s sometimes
painfully dry comedy with a bit of moisture. There’s real sentiment in
Odd’s attempt to find something to do after retirement, but the
sentiment never becomes schmaltzy, because of the distancing effect of
Owe’s stoic performance.

Unfortunately, the final scene is a bit of a copout; the film should
have ended a minute earlier, in a glorious shot from the top of an icy
stadium, the night sky black and glittering above. It’s one of a dozen
incredible images that take this film from merely being an amusing and
occasionally silly comedy into the realm of higher art.

This article appears in Jul 2-8, 2009.