Saturday, September 06, 2008

O'Horten

Brent Hamer | 2008 | 90 mins | Norway

This film really exemplifies a particular type of oddball humour that only Scandinavians are truly capable of nailing. It's dry, deadpan, totally absurd and frequently surreal. It's actually a lot like really good Canadian comedy – the kind that occasionally makes it into our better sketch comedy shows.

Odd Horton (I don't know if the name's a pun in Norwegian, but it's certainly appropriate in English) is a reserved locomotive engineer who's retiring after nearly 40 years of service. When his colleagues try to take him to a party on the eve of his last working day, things start to get weird for the near-pensioner.

Slowly, over the course of the next few days, Horten comes closer and closer to correcting his greatest regret – that he never went ski jumping, even though his mother was one of the first female ski jumpers in Norway.

Gorgeous Nordic landscapes and beautiful shots of trains sliding in and out of mountainside tunnels frame this truly weird comedy.

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