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Critics Consensus: Bent Hamer's latest is a droll, deadpan comedy filled with strange touches and melancholy charm.
Critic Consensus: Bent Hamer's latest is a droll, deadpan comedy filled with strange touches and melancholy charm.
All Critics (86) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (78) | Rotten (8)
It's a film whose pleasures come slowly, as we, like the title character, discover the joys he's missed. Best of all, we, like Odd the Norwegian bachelor, figure out it is never too late to start living.
Hamer creates a quirky, beguiling, and very funny mood piece that reflects on age, adventure, uncertainty, and humanity. Owe gives the character of Horten an off-center dignity that will suggest comparisons to Jacques Tati and Buster Keaton
The whimsy is never overplayed. The peculiar isn't teased at any character's expense.
This yarn about a train conductor whose life goes off track is Nordic to its bones: efficient, humane and droll in small measures.
Thanks to the consistent deadpan tone that Hamer and Owe establish, it's oddly satisfying.
Pointedly strange and whimsical, O'Horten mixes the surreal with the mundane in its depiction of the retirement and eventual rebirth of a train engineer.
In years to come, I would not be surprised if this droll Norwegian comedy is hailed as a minimalist masterpiece.
"O'Horten" only really works when Odd encounters the assorted oddballs; elsewhere the film travels a bit too light.
It entertains from start to finish and tells a story that is not just fun but in its inimitably gentle way has something to teach us all as well.
If you can settle into [Baard Owe's] playful deadpan rhythms, a bittersweetly funny, existential mystery -- or call it a modest adventure, if that's not too oxymoronic -- awaits.
O'Horten won't be for everyone, but if you enjoy character-driven films that also treat the landscape as a character, this one has a certain charm and appeal.
O' Horten moves slowly, sometimes excruciatingly so, but its thematic center is strong: How do you run out the clock of life?
I thought it would be a funny little story about a guy having a hard time settling in to retirement. But not so much. It wasn't funny, aside from one scene with an adorable little boy and for the most part it was boring. It had the potential, it just let me down in a really slow, painful way.
Super Reviewer
"O'Horten" is an odd little movie about an unassuming man named Odd(Baard Owe). Living alone, the only person he feels a connection to is his mother(Kari Loland). Turning 67, he is retiring from his job as a railway engineer. His plan is to fly back after his last run but oversleeps in a room not his own.(Long story, trust me.) Even after that, he continues to wear his uniform. And after watching life pass him by for so many decades, he has not decided what to do next which leads him on a series of low key adventures, shot in a deadpan style. In the end, "O'Horten" has little else to say on the subject of retirement and growing older except the light at the end of the tunnel may not be an oncoming train. However, the film does have a well-crafted message about how women should be allowed to compete in ski jumping. If you have the cojonoes to perform in this sport, then gender is totally irrelevant.
Typically melancholic meditation on retirement encased in a meandering plot where the lead bumps into a host of eccentrics who aid his introspection. Slight but not without charm.
The retirement of a train driver provides more philosophical musings from Scandinavia with a touch of dry humour. Some nice cinematography and scenes of Norwegian life, but this isn't really an attention grabbing movie, just slow, light entertainment.
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