O’HORTEN

(France , Germany , Norway, 2008, 90 mins)

35mm

Cast: Espen Skjonberg, Bard Owe, Ghita Norby, Bjorn Floberg
Producer: Bent Hamer
Director of Photography: John Christian Rosenlund
Editors: Pal Gengenbach, Silje Nortseth
Music: John Erik Kaada
Co Producer: James Frazee, Mads Peter Ole Olsen, Christoph Friedel, Karl Baumgartner, Alexandre Mallet-Guy
Sound Design: Morten Solum
Production Design: Kalli Juliusson

“It seems most everything comes too late … so nothing comes too late,” someone tells Odd Horten, a shy, willfully isolated man whose life has been organized around the rigid rituals associated with his career as a train engineer. Now at mandatory retirement age and robbed of his familiar, by-the-clock patterns, Horten finds chaos and portents of death, in forms alternately poignant and deliciously humorous, around every corner. Norwegian writer-director Bent Hamer (the Oscar-shortlisted KITCHEN STORIES, the Bukowski adaptation FACTOTUM) is quickly building a career as a master of droll, poignant cinematic humor, following promisingly in the substantial footsteps of practitioners including Jacques Tati and Aki Kaurismäki. In this, his most mature, sophisticated and emotionally resonant film yet, Hamer dramatizes his hero’s perplexity with a cool, elegant precision. Assisting Hamer enormously is actor Baard Owe, who gives O’ Horten his charmingly underplayed dignity. As the film progresses, we see Horten making small changes—tiny affirmations that offer a deeply moving sense of the resilience and flexibility demonstrated by humans in transition. –Larry Gross, Telluride Film Festival

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