There just aren’t enough movies about old people. O’Horten is a Norwegian film about the title character coming of age, but this coming of age story takes place when he’s 67 years old, on the eve of retiring. Directed by Bent Hamer (Factotum), it’s a revealing movie about the quietly tumultuous transition in life with a soft name: Retirement.
The movie opens with Odd Horten (Bard Owe), a 40 year veteran train engineer, waking up to his morning routine, which is just as mechanical as the train station he reports to each day. Helming the engine, he drives his train in and out of dark mountain passages opening to the stark landscape of Norway in winter.
The night before his final voyage, the locomotive engineers association has a small banquet honoring his years of service where he’s given a dwarfed trophy called The Silver Locomotive. Already, Horten feels set apart from his colleagues who still have the enthusiasm of being full-tilt into their careers. Through a complex series of circumstances, Horten accidentally falls asleep in a stranger’s apartment and misses his final voyage. It’s the premature arrival of this next chapter in life, a symptom of which is chronically falling asleep, usually at the wrong times.
The ceremony of his final voyage blundered, Horten trips into a retirement he’s not prepared for. His friends aren’t where they’re supposed to be because they’re also retired or passed away. He eats less, but sits longer in his regular pub. He’s an operator no longer operating. With no wife or children, he visits his mom whos is only a quiet shadow of her younger self. Finally, into the drudgery of establishing his new life while looking back at the old one, Horten meets a man laying in the sidewalk calling himself Dr. Sissener (Espen Skjønberg). Whether Dr. Sissener slipped on the ice, passed out or laid down for a nap is of no consequence. At a certain age, falling down or falling asleep comes to be an expected intrusion. Horten and Sissener spend a much needed evening together and give each other the nudge they’re looking for to make the next transition.
Although the end of O’Horten is pretty dense with metaphor, it’s the hour and a half preceding it that’s hypnotic. Usually, when an old person is cast in a movie, they fit a young person’s view of them. They’re curmudgeonly and funny, often full of wisdom when it’s needed. The proverbial firecracker, which is really a young person with old skin on. Horten is cast not as young people see him, but how he sees himself: Confused, dissatisfied and burdened by how helpless this next chapter of life promises to be. The charm of the movie isn’t in the funny parts–and there are several–but in the quiet, alone moments with Horten. These are moments we rarely see, particularly with old charcters in movies. But they are the real connecting point between for an audience that spans generations. Generations preoccupied with a mythical sweet-spot in life that doesn’t come soon enough and passes too quickly.
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SpoutBlog » Paul Moore