Image © Sony Pictures
A Man Named Otto
Otto dresses up in his one good suit, mounts a noose to the hole he drilled in the living room ceiling, stoically climbs the table and fixes the rope around his neck before kicking the table aside. But maybe he isn’t the handyman he once was. The noose doesn’t hold and falls with him to the floor, leaving only a bruised elbow and that drillhole in the ceiling.
A Man Called Otto stars Hollywood’s most likeable actor, Tom Hanks, and it speaks to his range that he successfully plays an old grump who has surrendered to anger and self-pity. Of course, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that this mumbling-grumbling figure will be revealed as a sensitive soul covered in a thick crust from life’s rough knocks. A Man Called Otto is adopted from the droll comedy A Man Called Ove from Sweden, a country whose contemporary filmmakers are often imbued with a sense of dry irony for which Hollywood seems incapable.
In any event, A Man Called Otto is a dark comedy by Hollywood standards, a meaningful (if sentimental) story delivered by a terrific cast headed by Hanks. So dark is the comedy that Otto tries to kill himself repeatedly, thwarted by fate, a stray cat and the pushy new neighbor.
Bad Mood Rising
Otto has good reason to complain. His wife died from cancer half a year earlier, yet one suspects that the state of the world had already put him in a bad mood before she passed away. For starters, his working-class neighborhood is threatened by developers. The aptly named DyeAmerica corporation has already erected the sort of multistory chickencoop condos that are sprouting like weeds on vacant lots across U.S. cities. And they are trying to muscle-out the longtime residents. He’s been more-or-less forcibly retired from the job he held for many years, replaced by a young person he trained. The false cheer of coworkers at his retirement party irks him, as does the hollow happy talk of his supervisor: “We all have to adjust after the merger …” Walking with an angry stride, Otto mutters darkly about “idiots” who don’t put their recyclables in the correct bins. He’s flustered by robo calls and a world where nothing is built to last. Everyday life rubs him like the blunt edge of a knife. He’s tired.
Enter the pushy new neighbor, a vivacious Latina named Marisol (a scene-snatching Mariana Treviño) who literally sticks her foot in Otto’s door and presents him with homemade mole (sharing food will become a motif for the value of community). She drags him into the bustling hive of her family, her all-thumbs husband and their two delightful young daughters. And then there’s the stray cat with pleading eyes that’s thrust upon him.
It won’t be a straight road to redemption for Otto by any means, but rather, a zig-zag course that turns him into a reluctant caregiver for animals, children and his neighbors. He’s still bristling with anger when he slaps around an annoying circus clown as he tries reading a story to Marisol’s kids in a public place. And he gets a Clint Eastwood glint in his eye as he confronts the rude driver of pickup truck.
A Man Called Otto becomes a parable about one of the great dangers of our time, the creeping disease of social isolation that leaves everyone alone and vulnerable, waiting to be picked off one by one by mendacious institutions and malevolent corporations. Finding common ground in the real world might be more difficult but maybe sharing a plate of chicken mole is the place to start.
