Bent Hamer's movies are an acquired taste.
That's a polite way of saying they can be beautiful but baffling. Hamer's film O'Horten is the story of a quiet train driver, and what we have here appears to be all of life and death in the tale of one man's retirement.
O'Horten begins with the most wonderful sounds of trains moving both across tracks and in and out of train stations. Odd Horten -- that's his name -- dresses quietly for his last day at work on the Oslo-Bergen line, and the movie, initially without dialogue, follows his train route from the driver's point of view.
Horten's train sweeps across the Norwegian landscape, which is pure white with snow. You get to see what the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel really looks like.
This is Horten's last day at work. With retirement comes various misadventures, most of which are quietly comic. After so many years of following strict train schedules, Horten will now encounter the world without any such protective restrictions.
Horten (Bard Owe) seems to be surrounded, suddenly, with all the things he's missed in life. Childless, he encounters a little boy as he attempts to find his way to a party. Single, he finds himself sharing a swimming pool with naked lovers. Seemingly friendless, he finds a man lying in the street who takes Horten home for a drink and a conversation. It's weird, and it's completely charming.
Horten's life has come to an unscheduled stop through retirement -- but it's not the end of the line. Change seems inevitable after he visits his elderly, beautiful, completely vacant mother at a nursing home. It's as if he can finally see everything he missed. (On the other hand, a sequence in which Horten attempts to meet a friend at the airport seems to suggest that modern life is chaotic, sterile and paranoid.)
Whatever it all means, O'Horten is a bit of whimsy held together by the wonderful face of actor Bard Owe. He says a lot with the slightest movement of an eyebrow, and his clear-eyed, affectionate observations set the good-hearted tone of the film.
O'Horten returns Hamer to the landscape of his own country, after his English-language movie Factotum was released in 2005. In Norwegian with English subtitles, O'Horten has won various prizes at film festivals and was Norway's entry for best foreign-language Oscar. The movie played first at the Toronto film festival.
(This film is rated PG)
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