A Man Called Ove

This movie was brought to my attention on Instagram while I was scrolling through 'reels'. (Yes, apparently, that's something I do now). Although, I shouldn't have said 'was brought to my attention' because I really had to search for the name of the movie. Basically, someone posted a video of a scene from the movie, I saw that, and I was impressed by the scene. This person did not hashtag the movie! Well, then you go on to comments and try to find someone who is not simply lying (because they do that too), and get the correct name of the movie from there. It must have been quite a scene to have moved me that much and go through all that effort, right? I won't tell you the details of the scene but I can tell you this much: it was at a train station and it involved life-saving. You'll understand which scene this was once you watch the movie.

Okay, then, I searched the movie with that name on the internet, confirmed it existed. Put it on my list, i.e. just kept it in mind---there is no written list. Later, I decided to find this movie so that I can watch it. It wasn't on any platform that I had subscription to. In the end, I found it on a streaming platform (completely legal) and watched it with ads.

That was quite the introduction to my journey leading to this movie. Let's start talking about the movie itself now. The movie is not in English and I think the people in the movie were speaking a bit fast, or the English subtitles in that platform just appeared late and disappeared early, who knows? I was able to read them 99% of the time but still, if you are tired, maybe you don't want to read that fast (and I was tired). I must say, if you are fluent in Swedish you won't need the English subtitles. 

Before going any further, I must also state here that this movie, A Man Called Ove, has won many awards. I won't list them here as you can check that on Wikipedia. It's based on a book of the same name by a Swedish author named Fredrick Backman. I liked the movie a lot but I am not sure if I would read the book. The movie was quite good and I am afraid that if I read the book it might ruin the movie for me (due to all that 'books are always better than the movie adaptation' thing).

Who is Ove? Obviously, he is the main character in the movie. The movie takes place when Ove is an old man but also provides some flashbacks from when he was younger (played by a different actor) to give a better understanding of Ove's personality and, hence, the story. Ove is a lonely person who has nobody. He makes it up to the age of 59 but doesn't want to go anymore after some point. I can see how an old person in Sweden can feel so lonely and would consider suicide for the following reasons. I know that Sweden is a country which historically has had a high suicide rate, the main reason being dark, long winters. But also, their culture has a great effect on it too. I don't know Swedish culture very well but suicide may not be perceived the same as in other cultures. Additionally, I personally believe that the fact that they have an individualistic society also has a huge impact on getting lonelier as you get old.

Back to the movie. The reason why Ove wanted to commit suicide was not the weather. As I mentioned above, it is loneliness. And, there is a reason why I wrote the previous paragraph. As the movie progresses, there are certain factors that come into play and help Ove overcome his loneliness (and ruin his suicide attempts). For example, there is a new neighbour. This neighbour is Persian. I strongly believe that the author chose the nationality of this neighbour on purpose. In the end, I believe this movie depicts the outcomes of individualism/collectivism in the context of loneliness with regards to suicide. It is due to the collectivist nature of the Persian neighbour's culture that Ove starts getting a sense of belonging and feeling connected to others.

Now, enough about suicide. The movie is actually not that dark. It is categorized as a comedy-drama. I would say, though, the comedy part is a bit like a dark comedy, at least to me. There were many moments I laughed and some of them were maybe for things that are actually sad.

I highly enjoyed the personality of Ove. He is an old person and from a completely different culture than mine, but I found many common traits between him and me. He is a grumpy man (giving others a hard time) but there were moments I was still on his side because I thought he was right (although it seemed like nonsense). By the way, I didn't mean the grumpiness when I said 'common traits', but who knows, maybe it is among them---I can definitely be grumpy sometimes. I believe anyone who watches this movie will find something in Ove from themselves (either from their lives or personalities, or both).

Okay, I can't finish this review without mentioning the remake of this movie. It's a movie called "A Man Called Otto". Now, there is a good movie and of course the US had to make it again because they know it will bring money. They see a good movie and they feel the urge to Hollywoodize it. Maybe you can tell from the tone that I am not exactly happy they remade this movie. What they did is they changed the name of the characters (it's still based on the book I mentioned above) for English ones and chose Tom Hanks as the lead actor. I haven't seen this movie yet---and I am not sure if I ever will. I am sure they also changed the brand of one of the cars in the movie (spoilers). I hope they didn't change the nationality of the neighbour because there is a reason why it was chosen that way. From what I can tell without watching the movie, I think they changed it to a Mexican person, which might still work, i.e. make sense, because Mexico also has a collectivist culture. Nevertheless, I still think it should have stayed as someone with the Middle Eastern culture. The movie is probably still pretty good because it's still based on the same successful story and Tom Hanks is a good actor but I'd recommend sticking to the original one---A Man Called Ove (2015). 

I just mentioned Tom Hanks being a good actor, I shouldn't conclude without saying that the performance of the actor who played Ove (Rolf Lassgård) was also outstanding---he actually won a best actor award for it too. Among the awards this movie has received, there is one that's for makeup and hairstyling, which I don't quite get why.

I give 9/10.