Despite the profusion of slapstick jappery, explosions, a whimsical veneer and cartoonish portrayals of its characters, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is not a film aimed at children. The Swedish blockbuster also includes castration, explicit violence, death by being locked in a freezer and near-the-knuckle racial categorisation. Balancing the picaresque and the macabre, the film ends up as neither one nor the other, or a harmonious hybrid. Although intermittently funny, it is not the sum of its parts.
The 100-Year-Old Man (Hundraåringen som klev ut genom fönstret och försvann) is based on Jonas Jonasson’s internationally best-selling novel of the same name. In the book, unfolding episodes from the current-day life of Allan Karlsson are punctuated by the narrative of his life before he entered the old people’s home he vanishes from just before his centennial birthday party. After slipping out of a window, he encounters a biker gang whose loot he ends up with, strikes out with their cash-stuffed suitcase, picks up sundry eccentrics and an elephant before his past and present collide.
Those early years were marked by the outlandish deaths of his parents, life in an orphanage where he was determined to be of "Negroid" characteristics and thus castrated. Fascinated with explosives, he then follows a random, supine path similar to a leaf blown on the wind which takes him into the orbit of General Franco, Oppenheimer and the American team developing the nuclear bomb, loveable old Joe Stalin, Albert Einstein’s less-than-brainy brother, Ronald Reagan and a credulous Gorbachev. When anyone wants a dreadful deed done, he does it. Without him and his idiot-savant approach to science, Hiroshima would not have been obliterated. He becomes a double agent and has no compunction about whether anyone is killed. Almost everyone is dim-witted, out to exploit or venal, which says a lot for Jonasson’s view of the world. At least its obvious forebear Forrest Gump wasn't so cynical. (pictured above right, Robert Gustafson as Karlsson dines with David Shackleton as Herbert Einstein).
The film sticks to the episodic structure of the book, which is partly where it comes unstuck. Both strands of Karlsson’s life remain discreet until the film’s closing moments and the relentless tide of over-egged farce becomes wearing. Its welcome is worn out around 75-minutes in, after which waiting out the conclusion becomes a chore.
Individual episodes amuse – like one of the bikers being sledgehammered by a centenarian (pictured left) – but, as Karlsson, Gustafson simply isn't funny. Quite something, considering he’s Sweden’s most popular comedian. His rendering of Karlsson brings to mind any one of Harry Enfield's old man guises.
On the printed page, the book could be put down and returned to. In measured doses, it worked. Following its structure with little change of gear makes the film an unremitting slog. For anyone who loved the book, the film of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared will no doubt be a treat as it motors along. But those coming to this cold will wonder what the fuss was about.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
