Movie Review: A Man Called Otto
It has been a solid two years since my wife and I had the opportunity of watching a movie in theaters. We tried to see Dune while she was pregnant but quickly left the theater, fearing the insanely loud music might cause hearing damage to our unborn baby! With the in-laws in town last week, we seized our chance to hit the theaters for the first time since our child’s birth.
We were willing to see any movie, just to have the chance to be out together without our baby for only the second time. Without doing any homework, we quickly scanned for evening shows at the closest theater to see what lined up well with our baby’s bedtime. A favorite actor of mine stood out, which caught our curiosity. Without even watching a trailer, we read the following synopsis on IMBD and decided on seeing A Man Called Otto, featuring Tom Hanks. “Otto is a grump who’s given up on life following the loss of his wife and wants to end it all. When a young family moves in nearby, he meets his match in quick-witted Marisol, leading to a friendship that will turn his world around.”
By the time we made it to the theaters, I had forgotten about 90% of that brief summary and only remembered it was about a grumpy old man, making the movie all the more surprising. This was perhaps the first time in my life I’d walked into a theater without knowing what to expect. The following will contain spoiler alerts, so continue reading with caution. The last thing I will say before providing my review of the movie for those who wish to read no further is that this film is a must watch. It contains Catholic undertones throughout and highlights the radiant nature of Christ’s love present in all things.
We are immediately introduced to Otto, who is played by Tom Hanks. He is a man in his 60s who lives a miserable life that has no meaning. Otto thinks the world is full of idiots and everyone around him is a nuisance. He argues with a store clerk over a minor discrepancy in price. He picks fights with his neighbors and yells at the stray cat by his garage. On the day of his retirement, he fumes out of the office after having nothing nice to say about anyone in the company.
Then, Otto calls up the utility companies to cancel his electricity, gas, and home phone line. Shortly after, Otto is seen fashioning a rope to his ceiling to hang himself. His suicide attempt is interrupted by his new Hispanic neighbors, Marisol and Tommy, as they struggle to parallel park a U-Haul. He angrily parks the U-Haul for them and storms back inside his house. Despite his outburst, Marisol and Tommy expressed their gratitude towards Otto by bringing him a home cooked meal. After wolfing it down, he put the rope around his neck once more.
As he dangled from the ceiling, Otto’s life flashed before his eyes. He recalls earlier memories of the time he met his wife Sonya by chance after she dropped a book at a train station. A younger Otto, who couldn’t afford to pay for his train ticket, was given money by Sonya to pay the conductor. She had given him one quarter too many; a quarter he kept all his life. As Otto’s flashback ends, the rope snaps and he falls to the floor, unsuccessful in his attempt to kill himself. He is next seen sitting in a cemetery making conversation to his wife’s grave, lamenting his wish to be with her.
Without going into too much detail about the subsequent scenes, the rest of the movie follows the same pattern. Otto seeks new ways to kill himself, only to be interrupted in the act to do some charitable deed for his neighbors. After his botched attempt at hanging himself, he tries filling his car with exhaust fumes. To his dismay, Marisol comes knocking on his garage door seeking his help. He later goes to a train station in hopes of getting hit. As the train approaches, an elderly man falls onto the tracks. Appalled by the mass of youths taking out their cellphones to record the helpless man, Otto comes to the rescue and saves the man from certain death.
Finally, after three failed suicide attempts, Otto grabs a shotgun from his attic. He was ready to blow his brains out until a flashback of his wife helped him recall her words to him decades prior after a bus accident took the life of her child in the womb. Despite their heartbreak and her paralysis, Sonya urged Otto to keep on living. This memory spoke deeply to his heart, as if she were before him saying this in the present. A conveniently timed knock on the front door frightened Otto into accidentally firing a round from his shotgun, narrowly missing his face. Once more, his help was wanted.
The only woke part of the film, a transgender named Malcolm was kicked out of the home by her father and sought refuge at Otto’s. But in a flash of unintentional, Catholic brilliance, the film highlighted the goodness behind the heart of every sinner, focusing instead on the common dignity shared between humans. Malcolm was once a student of Sonya’s, Otto learned after yelling at Malcolm for delivering newspapers to the neighborhood. Otto woke the next morning to a well-prepared breakfast by Malcolm.
Despite his frequent outbursts and bleak outlook on life, Otto’s neighbors, like Christ, begin to know him better than he knows himself. They were able to see past his behavior to see his heart. Though always angered by their presence, Otto dropped everything he was doing to help his neighbors, without exception. Even though he was too arrogant to admit it, deep down, he knew it was the right thing to do. In the words of St. Paul, “They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them” (Romans 2:15).
A series of flashbacks to Otto’s younger days with Sonya deeply embeds the viewer into the wounds that caused him to be so bitter. Sonya was his world, and her death crippled his spirit in the same way the bus accident crippled her legs. It’s hard not to feel the massive hole in Otto’s heart as the film advances. He longs for the love of his wife and fails to see that love as universal in the world around him. The genius of this movie is its ability to highlight the aching deep within the soul that causes us to lash out in sin. Behind every deformed heart is a series of wounds. Every heart longs to love and be loved but tragically collapses in on itself when blinded to the source of love itself. All you can love is yourself when you wall yourself off to the outside, which as Otto’s character demonstrates, really is no love at all.
Towards the conclusion of the film, Otto and his neighbors get caught up in a heated battle with the realty company which has taken over the HOA. In an attempt to corporatize the community, the firm used illicitly obtained medical records to argue an elderly couple was unfit to live in their home. The couple, Reuben and Anita, moved into the neighborhood at the same time as Otto and Sonya, and were close friends until Sonya’s passing devastated Otto. When the realty company began terrorizing his old friends, he knew he needed to act.
This is the pivotal moment in the film when Otto discovers his new vocation in the absence of his wife and realizes he is meant to love in new ways. A day after grabbing a shotgun to kill himself, Otto races across the street to ask Marisol if he can borrow her phone. She forcefully rejects his plea after leaving her out in the street the day prior, worried sick for his wellbeing. Marisol had spent the duration of the film showing as much neighborly love to Otto as possible, in order to crack his absolved ego. And unbeknownst to him at the time, Otto returned in kind. He taught her how to drive, he helped install a new dishwasher, he babysat her two children, and he drove her to the hospital after Tommy fell off a ladder borrowed from Otto.
At a time Otto needed her most, she could not love Otto any longer until he opened his wounds to her. A very Sacramental scene, Marisol deeply wanted to continue loving Otto. But after hurting her so badly, reconciliation was only possible once Otto confessed his wounds and outwardly expressed his inward struggles. Otto confessed his wife’s recent passing, his wife’s paralysis, the bus crash which killed his son, and his recent attempts at suicide. The two were thus reconciled and able to authentically love each other and pursue the common good of defending their neighbors, Reuben and Anita. The team was able to successfully thwart the realty company’s threats with the help of a social media journalist who reached out to Otto after his heroics at the train station.
Otto’s reconciliation and subsequent discernment of his vocation ushered in a new chapter in his life. The grumpy old man was no longer grumpy but full of life and charity towards his friends. A heart attack befalls Otto shortly after his beautiful transformation. Marisol, by his bedside, is informed by the nurse that Otto would someday be killed for having “too big of a heart”, a rare condition that’s plagued him all his life. After following grumpy old Otto through his journey, the irony sends Marisol into a seizing fit of laughter, creating the most hilarious scene of the whole movie.
Nice Otto takes great pride and joy in acting charitably towards his neighbors, finding fulfillment in life from bringing joy to others. He gives his car to Malcolm who had only ever owned a bicycle, he takes in the stray cat as his own, he willingly spends more time with his neighbors and names Marisol as his next of kin, and he takes them all with him to visit his wife’s grave.
Marisol and Tommy wake on a snowy morning to find that Otto never shoveled his walkway. The troubling sight caused panic, since they knew the diligent man always took care of the community when it snowed. They quickly raced across the street and sprinted up the stairs to find Otto lifeless on his bed, reaching towards the floor to grab the quarter Sonya gave him when they first met. Tommy finds a note on Otto’s dresser addressed to Marisol he had written some time earlier to let her know that when he passed, it was from his condition and not from his own hands. Otto poured out his heart to Marisol in the letter. He was gone, but his love was still present. He left Marisol his truck and his estate, to pay for her children’s education, leaving a lasting imprint on his neighbors who he was able to die calling family.
Fittingly, the movie concludes with a funeral Mass at a Catholic Church. That is when it clicked that this wasn’t simply a movie we chose to see, but something we were drawn towards to deepen our understanding of Christ’s love – especially regarding the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Holy Matrimony. Otto’s love and purpose was discovered in matrimony with his wife. After her passing, his reconciliation renewed his love and brought him into communion with love itself, until it finally consumed him with the warm embrace of death in Christ.
So much can be learned from this beautiful film. Otto never deserved to be treated so nicely by his neighbors. They treated him with mercy even when he couldn’t be bothered to treat them in kind. No matter how many times Otto insulted them, tried to run away, and shroud himself in the darkness of death, they always forgave him. Their love only grew and grew until it blinded him. As we celebrate the conversion of St. Paul this week, I am reminded of how Christ’s love literally blinded him and knocked him off his high horse. Otto and St. Paul were not conquered by Christ, but liberated against their false identity and woundedness.
This movie was a perfect representation of the love Christ has for sinners. No matter how often we sin against God, no matter how closed in on ourselves we wish to be, and no matter how hard we try to run from his love, the light always manages to find us even in the darkest of corners. God’s love is everywhere, and there isn’t a single place in the universe that his love is incapable of reaching. He keeps loving and loving, because love is all He can do, for God is love. A Man Called Otto was a clandestine work of the Holy Spirit to remind us of the nature of love and redemption offered through the mercy of Jesus Christ. I now know it was no coincidence to see the cashier at the movie theater wearing a bracelet that said “Jesus”.
Go see this movie while you can!