Not exactly the same old story
Centenarian anti- hero puts big- bang theory into practice
There are many great pleasures to growing old, and though society would prefer to warehouse the aged in a futile bid to affirm the perky flesh of youth, director Felix Herngren sets a 100- year- old man loose on an unsuspecting public, and lets us relish the resulting devastation.
The explosions are both literal and figurative in this story adapted from Jonas Jonasson’s novel with the awkwardly long title, because the 100- Year- Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared happens to be an explosives expert with an ability to see the truth.
Allan Karlsson ( Robert Gustafsson) loves to blow stuff up. It’s a talent he discovered as a young lad in short pants, and though it eventually set him on a life course filled with dismemberment and mutilation, he learned to find happiness amid the body parts.
Yes, there’s a certain amount of horror to this comedy from the darker side of the already sombre Swedish psyche, and Herngren demands his viewer adjusts quickly: He throws a severed head into the middle of the frame.
Images such as these are timelessly grotesque, and could very well ignite the fumes of current events, but in context, they work a sick magic.
We like Allan because he’s selfconfident without being selfabsorbed. He’s empathetic without being maudlin, and he’s entirely unconcerned with what anyone thinks about him. He is the living definition of what makes aging enjoyable, and in so many ways, such a relief.
You know the ride is going to end, but until it does, you might as well enjoy it, and maybe explode a few of your own myths along the way.