A Man Called Ove (Movie Review by Bob Racine)

1 hr & 55 min, color, 2016

                                            

It is not often that we see a lighthearted motion picture featuring an individual’s repeated attempts to commit suicide.  Yes, you are reading me correctly – suicide intentions made humorous.  Not an easy task, but a Swedish auteur named Hannes Holm, director and screen writer, has succeeded where many others would probably have failed.  The individual whose grim, resolute efforts are depicted is a fifty-nine year-old construction engineer Ove (pronounced o-va) laid off from his decades-long job and six months a widower.  He is in every respect a curmudgeon who alienates himself from his neighbors over the most inconsequential issues.  He is a loud constant complainer, what we Americans might call a regular sourpuss.  

                                             

Most of the magic in the story derives from an astoundingly effective performance by an actor named Rolf Lassgard, someone fittingly unhandsome, whose tall obese body, pudgy face and deep base bark give us a kind of ferocious music.  Ove is a perfectionist, whose avocation is watchman in a lower middle class housing project, a gated community where each morning he does the rounds and tries to enforce rules of cleanliness and order, including the disallowance of automobiles on the narrow main street.  He never hesitates to dress down any violator, however slight the violation.  But his job has become only a habit; his heart has not been in it since his wife Sonya died, a woman he dearly loved.  Each day he takes flowers to her grave and talks with her, promising to join her very soon.  He is such a “proper” person that before each attempt to snuff himself out he dresses up in his finest clothes, as if he is going on a date, anticipating his reconciliation with his beloved.  That practice alone supplies comic value to his brash behavior.  Something in his manner begs us not to take him too seriously. 

Of course he is not very good at dying by his own hand.  Something or someone always distracts him or interrupts him.  An attempt at hanging from his living room ceiling is thwarted when the rope breaks.  This failure impels him to march back to the supply store and bawl out the saleswoman for selling him material that is not as strong as she allegedly claimed it was. A plan to throw himself in front of a train goes awry when another individual on the station platform accidently passes out and falls onto the tracks, and he is faced with the “inconvenience” of rescuing the guy.  By the time the others present pull Ove to safety the excitement for him is passed.  An attempt to asphyxiate himself in his car garage is interrupted by neighbors who pick up the scent.  And it is neighbors again whose pounding on his door causes him to lose his grip on his shotgun pressed to his throat.  Even a stray cat does its share in slowing his rush to extinction.  You have to witness these scenes to really appreciate the droll humor in them.                                      

There is, however, a sober and serious aspect to the story, one that becomes visible to us in an extended interwoven flashback.  It seems that Ove has not had the happiest life.  Death has visited him with great shock three times.  First, his mother dies when he is but a small child, he being the only offspring.  Then his father, a railroad worker, is accidentally killed on the job when Ove is in his early twenties.  This crisis leaves him vulnerable and all alone, until he meets Sonya (played with great sparkle and zest by Ida Engvoll), preparing to be a teacher.  Their courtship is very touching and joyously uplifting and ends when she successfully supports him in becoming an engineer.  They have a long and largely happy marriage.   Of course the third death and the most heartbreaking is that of Sonya herself, paraplegic and childless because of a severe tragedy.  In the wake of her passing from cancer, which is never portrayed, Ove grows hard and decides that nothing good has happened to him other than the woman he has loved.  “There was nothing before Sonya and there will be nothing after Sonya”.  

The rest of the magic stems from a lively supporting performance. 

Bahar Pars plays Parvaneh,  a young Persian mother of two who is expecting a third, a refugee from her Middle Eastern country, a woman who turns out to be a match for Ove, at least in the strongminded department.  She and her young Swedish husband and their two children move in next door, and Ove is repeatedly drawn with much resistance into helping them with one thing or another.   Parvaneh becomes the closest thing to a real friend, something that causes some conflicting emotion for Ove.  It is Parvaneh who finally breaks through his shell and lets him know how insane he is thinking that he does not need anyone.  She is the one to whom he ends up telling the flashback history.  The sharing of it, which apparently he has kept for so long to himself, does much to quieten the self-destructive urge that has been driving him.                                          

It is a real delight watching the influence of the two women upon Ove.  He betrays the fact, ever so slowly, that he does have a conscience and a heart of sympathy.  It takes relatively little to uncover that heart that still beats below the bluster.  Every time he does a favor upon request we get the feeling that he is just getting some duty out of the way so that he can effect his escape from the lonely life he is living.  Just this one last bothersome thing before I depart!  But one “bothersome” thing leads to another and another, until we are finally treated to his smile.  For me the most touching moment in the story is his holding Parvaneh’s newborn baby and placing it lovingly in the cradle he once made for the child he expected but never had.                     

“A Man Called Ove” is a sensitive and warm movie, very much on the side of the angels, well written and cleverly conceived, adapted from a novel by Fredrik Buckman.  It is one of the most enjoyable films from the continent of Europe I have seen in quite a while. 

My only fault-finding has to do with the casting of the young Ove.  Filip Berg is a competent actor and one to whom I extend my best wishes in the pursuit of his career, but I think he was miscast.  Admittedly it is always a challenge trying to match up different generations of the same character.  But I see nothing in the physique of Berg that bears any comparison to Lassgard’s bulkiness and broad countenance.  The same can be said for their personalities.  One is unassuming, the other is forceful and in your face.  I cannot close the gap between old and young, something I know is possible in motion pictures, because I have seen it done many times.  But what makes the flashback so enjoyable nonetheless is the appeal of the lovely Ida Engvoll.  She is the dominant figure in most of the scenes in which Berg appears.  She is the sun that outshines his moon.  As such they make a lovely pair.                               

I highly recommend “Ove” for viewers who are drawn to storytelling about ordinary people struggling with sorrow and in transition toward crucial personal discoveries about themselves, people crawling out of cages of their own making.

To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To know about me, consult the autobiographical entry on the website for Dec. 5, 2016.