Otto is really bad at killing himself. This late-middle-aged curmudgeon has many useful skills, but ceasing his own mortality is not among them. For Otto, the problem with failed suicide attempts is not only the curse of failure but the interruption of meticulously laid plans. Bare minimum, if you’re gonna be around another day, you gotta have something to eat, right? Otto is the kind of guy who recycles the empty milk bottle prior to suicide.
Is grumpiness a choice or a lifestyle? I’m pretty sure it’s a choice, but when I think of the grumps I know, it feels like grumpiness is such a part of them that it’s hard to tell. Grumpiness, once chosen, seems a hard habit to break. There’s a comfort in being a grump. I wouldn’t call it “joy,” exactly (do you know any happy grumps?), but there’s a self-satisfaction there. And today’s film is about Otto, the ultimate grump.
Otto (Tom Hanks) is the kind of old white guy who gets offended when you try to help him in a hardware store. And he will get offended when you charge him the 2-yards price for five feet of rope. And he will get offended when you walk your dog improperly, or recycle improperly, or stretch improperly, or drive improperly, or try to greet him at all.
Quite the snowflake, this fellow. But I’m sure neither he nor his fans will see it that way. Hostile, completely self-absorbed, and the epitome of the modern victim/grievance movement, Otto makes a damn good MAGA icon, but let’s not write him off yet; there might be more here than his assholery.
The deal is that Otto is a widower; the little joy he might once have gotten out of life has now disappeared entirely. His objective now is to pay the gas bill until exactly tomorrow morning and then hang himself. His suicidal plans are interrupted by new neighbors Marisol (Mariana Treviño), Tommy (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), and their two daughters. Perturbed by anything the violates his delicate sensibilities, Otto interrupts his own death to school Tommy on his poor parking skills. Marisol mistakes this as kindness and immediately develops a relationship with Otto. This is a relationship Otto doesn’t want, mind you, but Marisol ain’t freaking going away.
Compounding Otto’s inability to escape personal relationships is the fact that Marisol is in her third trimester and Tommy just broke himself while improperly using Otto’s tools. *sigh* guess I’m going to have to kill myself tomorrow *sigh* The new neighbors and everybody in their slightly-closed community are all aware of Otto’s grumpiness, but are clueless about his unhappiness. Grumpiness can mask a lot of things.
There’s a joy in knowing, secretly, that beneath the grump, Otto has a kind heart. It’s a discovery I would never make were I Otto’s neighbor. In fact, most people who know Otto treat him kindly as if either he’s earned something we’ve never seen or they all know something we don’t … maybe they even know something Otto doesn’t. I don’t really have space in my life for a new grump; I cannot help but applaud the enclave that has chosen to promote Otto rather than dismiss him. Hanks does a fantastic job of accepting and revealing just enough kindness to let us in on the joke.
Curiously, A Man Called Otto is something of both an intensely pro-MAGA and anti-MAGA film; I have no doubt that had the American remake followed immediately upon the heels of the Swedish original A Man Called Ove, it would have been lauded by the pro-Trump crowd as an aspiration to their value system: here is a aging white man who is fiercely independent with useful skills and suffers no fool gladly. Due to no fault of his own, his life is worse than it used to be; shouldn’t he be worthy to deliver blame and complaint (like any good MAGA soldier)?
Is this not how you see yourselves, Trumpies?
Oh, and he’s not racist or sexist or homophobic or white supremacist at all, just like you aren’t (snicker). Sorry, couldn’t say that with a straight face. More importantly, however, he lives by a set of rules that were more pronounced when he was a child. What’s not important is that society constantly evolves and those rules had been put
in place specifically to endorse white males at the expense of everybody else. What is important is that the rules MUST continue to be followed (except when you break them, of course) and those rules include the hilarious premise that it is your divine right never to pay for anything you don’t want, including 33 cents worth of rope. Um, yeah, MAGA, just ask any liberal even once how much “extra security” comes with raising our already hilariously bloated national defense spending … then ask us how much it would cost to provide health care for every single American instead. You think you’re paying for things you don’t want?!?! As usual, you have no freaking idea because you never cared to look.
There’s a flip side to this coin. For a MAGA icon, Otto is, unfortunately, a very open soul. He tolerates foreigners, immigrants, transgender people, and people who have even *gasp* done him wrong. What do you suppose happens when Otto defies Home Depot or the Real Estate company trying to screw he and his neighbors out of their property? You call him a “socialist,” right? Sure, you have no idea what the word means, but you’re happy to apply it negatively to anybody who takes the “wrong” stance against big business. You see, here’s the problem — you, MAGA, see yourselves as Otto: fierce, independent, thrifty, smart, and open (“I’m not racist; you’re racist!”) and yet every time you had the chance to denounce racism, homophobia, gun violence, white supremacy, corporate welfare, lawlessness, or just plain evil in the past seven years, you have doubled down instead on all of it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the cop who kneels on a black man’s neck until he dies or it’s a scared boy who brings an automatic weapon to a rally for a cause he doesn’t support, you can always be counted on to back the homi-side.
Hence, I would love for all y’all to see A Man Called Otto, recognize him as one of your own … and then carefully reconstruct your lives as Otto did, understanding that there is more to life than hate. But that’s not the MAGA I know. You folks are fantastic on symbols, but pure shit on substance. Otherwise, this is a pretty good watch.
There once lived a man called Otto
Who lost everything he had sought-o
But failed suicide
Wounded his pride
So “change” became his new motto
Rated PG-13, 126 Minutes
Director: Marc Forster
Writer: David Magee
Genre: Grumpiness
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: MAGA
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: MAGA
