Movie Review SSJ

Like a piece of batik cloth, “O’Horton” looks rough, but is very textured. This film is as smooth as water, and seems to be as bland and tasteless as water, but just right to wet a dry and cracked mouth.

It is easy to recall Hou Hsiao-hsien’s long shots, often a cigarette burning to the filter, the male protagonist in the center of the shot is still motionless. Perhaps the kaada soundtrack is excellent, perhaps the exotic atmosphere of the small Nordic countries is really fascinating, “O’Horton” after watching the feeling like a person walking from one end of a city to the other in a quiet day. Sometimes, a lifetime is like an uneventful day.

In Norway’s small towns, you can’t see the crosswalks and dense crowds, snow like tar spread throughout the streets, like paint scattered on the roofs and doors. I remember a movie in which the young hero and heroine waltzed in the middle of such a street, then hugged and kissed each other deeply. In “O’Horton,” however, it’s just about an old man who drives a train, O’Horton, retiring.

What would it be like to work in a position for 40 years? What would it be like to retire from a position where you have worked for 40 years? In China, where there is a strong sense of unit, this kind of scenario will appear around our lives one after another.

On the day of his retirement, O’Horton was rewarded with a party, met a lively child who liked to have strangers tell him stories, and an old man who died driving with his eyes closed. Lost the pipe he had used for a long time. Fell asleep in the sauna and saw a couple of youngsters flirting in the pool. Finally put on a pair of skis and slid down the highest point of the city with a 4.7 billion year old meteorite.

Then the movie screen went black.

Joy and sorrow, life and death, ideals, habits, lust …… O’Horton on what happens in a day seems to be a lifetime.

A bright spot suddenly appeared in the center of the dark screen, then grew larger and larger, and it was the train entering the station through the tunnel. O’Horton, holding the dog of his friend who died just before he met him, smiles with an old woman.

Next, perhaps, is happiness. The various experiences of a train engineer/driver in retirement.

Although it is a very Scandinavian regional, audio-visual style, and has a sentimental theme, the film shows a different and happy outlook on life through the plot of a series of helpless cold humor.