Taciturn train engineer Odd Horten (Bård Owe) lives alone in
Norway. His closest friend is the man who sells him tobacco; his senile
mother can barely respond to the tulips he brings her. Unsurprisingly,
retirement leaves Odd without mooring. Each morning, he dons a jaunty
engineer’s cap he has no reason to wear. But O’Horten isn’t a
story about a sad man being sad, it’s an “Into the Night” movie (genre
name courtesy of The Onion‘s AV Club; think Risky
Business or Wonder Boys). And so Odd goes adventuring,
skinny-dips in a public pool, wears red high-heels and makes friends
with a carpe-diem-loving inventor. Nothing that happens in
O’Horten is very surprising. But it’s still satisfying to watch
a wiser, at-peace Odd finally take off his uniform. (And put on new
clothes. He is 67.)
This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2009.