A Man Who Doesn’t Know What to be Called
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IMage courtesy of Atria Books
In 2012, Swedish writer Fredrik Backman published A Man Called Ove. Three years later, it was adapted into a movie. 10 years after the novel, they released another movie titled, A Man Called Otto. I will be comparing and giving my thoughts on the novel, and the 2022 movie.
The biggest change between the two mediums is title and location. The novel takes place in a small Swedish town. The car the man drives is a Saab, and his name is Ove. In the movie, he’s in a small town in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The man drives a Chevrolet, and his name is Otto. For actor choices, I believe these changes were necessary. It’s probably hard to find a Swedish actor to market to North American audiences.
The novel opens with Ove trying to purchase a new device. He wants a normal computer. He’s got a tablet in his hands but wants something else. Ove finds the sales assistant useless, and brings in a manager, who isn’t much more help. Ove leaves without buying the box. The movie opens with Otto trying to buy 5ft of rope but is getting charged for 6ft. Everything above ensues, and although the movie doesn’t show Otto purchasing the rope, we see rope later. In the movie, this is the only purchase made, instead of the novel showing multiple. I believe this change was necessary. The novel doesn’t even show Ove purchasing rope, which is more important to the story.
In the novel, Ove works with the railway as a night cleaner; a job received when he was sixteen and worked until the end of his life. He would meet his wife, Sonja, years later at a train station. He fell in love with her and would sit with her on the train going the opposite direction for months, until she demands him to take her to dinner.
In the movie, Otto works at a steel plant. It is unknown how long he’s been working there, but based on future conversations, it was after Otto met Sonya. He would meet her at a train station after she dropped her book on the platform, and he boarded the train to return it. Since the train is going the opposite way of his ticket, he has to buy a new one, and Sonya chooses to help pay. Later, Otto tries to repay her, and she says, “take me out instead.” I prefer the way Otto and Sonya met in the movie. I wish the movie showed Otto riding the train multiple more times before taking her out.
In the novel, Ove doesn’t like cats, and so when one shows up, he refuses to take it. While they save the cat from freezing to death, we learn his neighbours are allergic, and Ove is forced to keep it. He takes the cat everywhere as he refuses to keep it in the house alone. The cat is badly injured; missing patches of fur, half a tail, and an ear. In the movie, Otto seems indifferent towards cats, and the cat is in one piece. I believe the man with a cat in the novel is better. He gets a cat, hates it, and must learn to live with it. While the man in the movie just got a cat and was like, “I guess I have a cat now.”
image courtesy of: Marc Forster and David Magee
The final thing I would like to mention is the man’s life. In the novel, we see a lot of Ove’s life. We see his life with his father; what things are like after his passing; and his relationship later in life with Sonja and her dad. The movie only shows us what happened when Otto met Sonya. I wish the movie had brief flashbacks to his time with his father and his life afterwards. It would be easier to connect with Otto, like readers did with Ove, if we knew more about his early life.
There are so many different things that I barely covered half the book. Overall, I believe that both versions are wonderful, and incredibly moving. It’s hard to perfectly replicate a 286-page novel into a 2-hour movie. Considering the restrictions, the movie did a great job representing American Ove.
Matthew Sgabellone is an Algonquin College student in their Professional Writing program. He has never worked a muti-day job, so he typically has a lot of free time whenever he’s not in school. He uses this free time to do writing and watch movies and motor racing. A lot of books he has read have been transferred into movies, and he’s always curious how his favourites did. He watches movies every week with his family, and they often talk about their thoughts once the movie has concluded. He has always been curious about more books to screen adaptations, and would like to take you along the journey of his findings.
