Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

A Man Called Ove Blu-ray Movie Review

Grumpy Old Man.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 19, 2016

If you’re an awards season geek like I am, maybe you’ve been paying attention to the various films that have been “shortlisted” (which in some cases is an hilariously inaccurate description) for various nominations, notably the Academy Awards. A Man Called Ove is one of the semifinalists to be considered for next year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, but we’ll have to wait until the actual nominations are announced to find out if it made the final cut. Ove (Rolf Lassgård) is an aging guy who might charitably be called a curmudgeon, and who might uncharitably be called an ass. He’s the sort of scowling presence one can easily imagine screaming at neighborhood kids to keep off his lawn, and the film draws most of its fitful energy from Lassgård’s kind of comically menacing presence. The film itself has both a sweet and a tart flavor at times, though it probably ends up falling victim to its own strictures, with Ove being paired with and/or pitted against (more or less, anyway) a new (and basically normal and happy) family which moves into his neighborhood. That overly familiar aspect is oddly central to the plot mechanics of the film, when some of the most emotionally potent content actually comes from what are supposedly extracurricular vignettes involving Ove, who is revealed to be a widower and who soon has unemployment to add to his list of woes. Effective as a character study if not necessarily as a really convincingly organic narrative, A Man Called Ove may appeal to those who are brave enough to introduce themselves to their neighborhood curmudgeon, discovering that sometimes a prickly exterior only masks a heart of gold.

The film’s first few moments with Ove detail a man who is not exactly easy to get along with. He’s in a florist’s shop and first he upbraids another customer for inadvertently butting in line in front of him and then he really goes after the salesclerk when she informs him his two for one coupon doesn’t work since he’s only buying one bouquet. The initial impression of a really difficult to deal with old guy is perhaps tempered a bit when it’s revealed that the flowers he’s buying are for a grave (and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it’s his dearly departed wife’s final resting place).

When Ove is summarily let go of his lifelong job at a factory, he resorts to being the putative policeman at his neighborhood housing complex. There’s a bit of a history here, as is quickly detailed in a couple of asides by some other neighbors, but the upshot is whether or not any of the rest of the area’s residents want him to, Ove is out there making sure everything is going according to plan. His plan.

It’s already obvious that Ove’s snarkiness is a facade covering up a very deep wound that has scarred his psyche in the wake of his wife’s passing. It soon becomes evident that Ove is suicidal, and in one of the film’s running gags (gag in both senses of the word), he keeps trying to kill himself, only to be interrupted by various happenings around his home environment. One of these interruptions is the calamitous arrival of a new family headed by Patrick (Tobial Almborg) and Parvaneh (Bahar Pars), an ebullient Persian woman who seems to “get” Ove despite his attempts to keep her at arm’s length.

While Ove’s tentative “friendship” with Parvaneh provides a kind of through line for the film, where A Man Called Ove really finds some resonant emotional material is via a series of flashbacks that occur during several of Ove’s suicide attempts. These begin to detail a number of both triumphs and tragedies that occurred over the course of his life, all of which help the viewer to understand the kind of intentionally sharp tempered elderly man that Ove has become. What’s also more than obvious, and something that may simply be a bit too rote to overcome, is that Ove is a genuinely decent and loving man, one who wants to do the right thing, even if he wants to bitch about it while he’s doing it.

A Man Called Ove relies almost entirely on the good will generated by its game cast, and while the film’s narrative has few if any surprises, things build to an appropriately emotional climax, one that I suspect will have even some elderly curmudgeons reaching for a tissue or two, or at least pretending to clear their throats rather than admit that a silly little film (a Swedish film, at that!) has gotten to them this way. There’s nothing very innovative in A Man Called Ove’s plot mechanics or indeed even in its presentation, but the film goes down easily enough and provides Lassgård with a showcase role (he won the Swedish equivalent of the Best Actor Academy Award for his work in the film).

A Man Called Ove Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Man Called Ove is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Music Box Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. The IMDb is once again lacking data on this shoot, but several sites state the film was digitally captured with Arri Alexa XT cameras. The result boasts some excellent fine detail in things like the blue rope Ove uses to try to hang himself or the soggy grass of the neighborhood Ove attempts to police. A lot of the contemporary footage has a very slight bluish edge, something that casts a kind of cool light on proceedings that become increasingly emotional. Much of the flashback material is almost golden in tone, as if being lit by the warmth of Ove's memories. What appear to be some brief greenscreen utilization in some scenes (e.g., the moments in the car between Ove and his father) look just slightly softer than the bulk of the presentation. Contrast is solid throughout and there are no problems with compression anomalies.

A Man Called Ove Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Man Called Ove has a nicely immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track is also included). Even before the first images are seen, the soundtrack is providing good ambient environmental sounds, something it continues to exploit throughout the film's running time. There are some fun sound effects, notably when Ove attempts to give Bahar some driving lessons, but this is a track built out of subtle moments, nothing really overtly showy. Some of the affecting string cues have rather pronounced low end energy and also waft through the surround channels quite winningly. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly and there are no problems of any kind to report on this track.

A Man Called Ove Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Ove in Us All: A Talk with Hannes Holm, Rolf Lassgård and Bahar Pars (1080p; 14:29) is an enjoyable set of interviews that are used interstitially between scenes from the film.


• Director and Cast Q & A at Scandinavia House NYC (1080p; 21:03) is another interesting conversation with Holm, Lassgård and Pars, conducted in September 2016 and moderated by the Wall Street Journal's John Anderson. There's some pretty prevalent video noise throughout this, for those who care about such things.


• Makeup Gallery (1080p)


• Makeup Time Lapse (1080i; 00:49)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:00)

A Man Called Ove Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A Man Called Ove is a little hackneyed at times, and it makes no bones about going for the jugular (and/or heartstrings) as it moves into its endgame, but any perceived missteps are easily forgiven in the light of some really effective performances and a rather winning combination of sweetness and tartness. My hunch is this film may simply be too straitlaced to appeal to Academy voters who tend to go for more provocative material, but even if it doesn't make the final cut for Best Foreign Language Film, its Blu-ray incarnation comes Recommended.