O’HORTEN World Cinema

“It seems most everything comes too late . so nothing comes too late,” someone tells Odd Horten, o 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 Kaurismaki. 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 Board 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.