Odd Horten has not lived a terribly odd life. You could write his biography in a single sentence: “Spent 40 years driving trains across Norway, never married.” He’s generally well liked by his fellow conductors, but even they would probably have little to add to those nine words. Even when the whole group gets together to play a game of Norwegian railroad trivia, Odd sits quietly, smoking his pipe, barely saying a word. Now he’s 67, and ready to retire. “Not accustomed to the limelight,” says the emcee at Odd’s retirement dinner, where he’s presented with the “Silver Locomotive” trophy to mark his four decades of service. Odd has spent his entire life on a railroad track — what will he do with himself now, when those tracks are removed?That’s the question posed by O’Horten, an unusual, quietly intriguing little comedy from Bent Hamer, the Norwegian director whose previous films include Kitchen Stories and the Charles Bukowski adaptation Factotum. His rigourous daily routine suddenly rendered pointless, Odd roams the city, having one random encounter after another, falling asleep in strange places, striking up conversations with old friends and total strangers alike, wandering away from them seemingly whenever the mood strikes him. It’s one of those movies that the director seems to be making up as he goes along — until the ending, which you suddenly realize he’s been perfectly preparing you for it emotionally all along. (Like Model Shop, which I recently wrote about, O'Horten belongs to one of my new favourite genres, the "guy aimlessly wandering around the city" movie. I'm going to have to invent a catchier name than that, though. "Ramblecore"?)
Some of Odd’s encounters are comical — I love the scene, for instance, where he leaves a bar after freezing rain has coated the city, and silently watches as otherwise sober-looking middle-aged men sail down the street on their backsides. And some of Odd’s encounters are poignant and filled with an awareness of the inevitability of death. In one beautiful sequence, Odd hides out after closing time at a gymnasium to sneak into the darkened swimming pool for an illicit nude swim. But when a young couple jumps into the water, also naked, for a midnight tryst, Odd quietly slips away before they can notice him. He was there first, but somehow he instinctively senses that he needs to cede the pool to the young people.
Odd is played by Bård Owe, a veteran Norwegian actor who’s appeared in most of Lars Von Trier’s early movies — he was the cancer-obsessed pathologist Dr. Bondo in The Kingdom. Odd is a role that requires Owe to do more listening than talking, but even without dialogue, Owe’s warm, dignified performance masterfully conveys Odd’s fear of the future, but also a growing willingness to embrace new experiences. By the end of the film, he’s even willing to climb into a car with a man who claims he can drive from one end of the city to the other with his eyes closed. Odd isn’t entirely convinced the man’s claim is true, but he’s curious to see what will happen all the same.
Watching O’Horten is a lot like that car ride. It requires a certain amount of trust on the part of the viewer — and even though it might not be immediately apparent where the trip will take you, something about the driver makes you feel you’re in good hands all the same.
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