Here Is Harold (2014) User Reviews

Victim of Ikea kidnaps founder

[maurice_yacowar · 8/10 · 9 January 2016]

So there is Ikea — proud emblem of modern, efficient Sweden. The international retailer makes comfort and classiness accessible to the budget-conscious. A little money, an Allen wrench and anyone (almost) can live in style. That is, Ikea style, which is pretty good if not especially permanent. And those meatballs. Mmmm.

But here is Harold. Harold is a more traditional furniture dealer, who makes a sturdy, labor intensive chair and sells longer-lasting value and style. For 40 years he has been the foremost furniture dealer in his Norway community, until the Swedish behemoth moves in next door and saps his business. Harold represents the human cost when a monster company moves in. Harold is the saddening truth that lies behind the flashy success.

The opening scene shows the huge Ikea plant being assembled in time-lapse photography, as if out of a box. Then Ikea bankrupts Harold's business, forcing him and his wife to vacate their store and home.

Worse, Harold can no longer look after his disintegrating wife. When he tries to put her in a home even the accordion band fails to impress her. She drops dead, having fired a last round of obscenities at her helpers.

Harold burns down his old building, but the sprinkler system thwarts his auto-da-fe. So he decides to kidnap the Ikea founder and owner, Ingvar Kamprad.

But as this is an Ikea project Harold's plan has a few pieces missing. He has no plan or end-game. He doesn't know how he'll get to Kamprad, until the man pops up on the highway needing a lift. Harold doesn't know what he wants out of the deal, whether money (and how much) or the validation of forcing Kamprad to record a public confession of his company's malfeasance.

The Ikea project also inevitably has a few extra parts — the other losers Harold encounters. His own son has lost his job, marriage and a barroom scuffle. A vagrant teenage girl finds Harold stuck in his car in the snow and sort of saves his life. She helps Harold handle Kamprad, providing a trailer refuge and saving both men from drowning in the ice. Harold helps her deal with her slatternly mother who sleeps around trying to recover her glory as NW Sweden twirling titlist. Harold finds himself centring a circle of lost souls, people with dashed hopes, financial, emotional and career constraints — in fact, the sad human underbelly of the Ikea success.

For his part Kamprad sails through his ordeal unperturbed, friendly to his captors, helpful with his advice, warning them off pitfalls, ever ready to brag about an old money-saving idea or to come up with a new. Once set free, he hides in Harold's trunk. Returned to Ikea he invites him up for a drink. Like Ikea, this Kamprad is a breed apart, sailing through life with confidence and brass, impervious to the damage he transcends.

Quirky comedy with great laughs

[OJT · 8/10 · 1 November 2014]

"Here is Harold" is another of those Norwegian comedies I really love. Understated, real and slowly going over the top, without any grace, but with loads of charm and laughs. I've seen so many now, and I really love them all. Further down here, you'll find others like it.

Harold is close to becoming a pensioner. His wife is drifting into Alzheimer's, and 40 years of "furnituring Åsane" is over, due to a large IKEA shopping center is built up right beside his old store. He goes out of business, having to say goodbye to bis Mercedes, and nurses a hatred against the whole IKEA-thing. But Harold isn't the one accepting this without actions.

Bjørn Sundquist is fabulous as Harold, as we've seen him many times before in great roles liker this. He really deserves a movie where he can act it all out in more than a supporting role. That is what we get here. Sundquist in full bloom. Simply great acting as the grumpy man he portrays.

Gunnar Vikene has got acclaim for The features "Himmelfall" and "Vegas", which I both liked. The film closes to this is without doubt Himmelfall. But this also resembles films from other Norwegian film auteur's like Rune Denstad Langlo and Bent Hamer. We see the same great understated humor that we found in "Nord" (of which this storytelling also resembles quite much), "Eggs", "O'Horten", "A somewhat gentle man", "In order of disappearance" and so on. I really would say this is my favorite way of making a comedy. On the negative side, I'll have to note the problem that mist viewers would expect a bigger climax to this story. That really didn't bother me. But I could have gone on for another half hours watching Harold without hurting other than my laughing muscles.

If you're in for some light entertainment, though with a serious back wall, this is probably oner you should check out. Just liker in the films mentioned, you'll have some great laughs, of which you'll never forget, and remember this film for.

There is nothing flat-packed about this quirky little gem!

[graxgra · 8/10 · 12 January 2017]

"Here Is Harold" is a quirky Norwegian film which walks a fine line between comic absurdism and drama, and for the most part pulls it off quite successfully. I found it be funny, entertaining and touching, and well worth the inconvenience of having to deal with subtitles for the dialogue.

Harold has run his own furniture shop for 40 years when he learns that Ikea will be opening across the road from his store. Harold watches the news of this on TV, and announces to his wife - "We survived waterbeds, we'll survive this." Predictably though, within a short matter of time his small shop goes out of business and we learn that his wife has Alzheimers disease. With his wife's condition deteriorating and the failure of his shop, Harold no longer has the means to look after her and makes the very reluctant decision to place her in a nursing home. His wife, in a moment of lucidity realises that she is being left alone, dies on the spot.

With both his wife and his business dead, Harold decides to burn his old shop down, and also attempts to take his own life by pouring petrol over himself while the shop burns. One of the things I really love about this film is its ability to combine comedy and real drama in the same scene - and in this scene the combination of pathos as Harold decides to end his life along with the comic failure of this to happen works really well and neither the drama or comedy compromises the other.

With his attempted suicide thwarted, Harold decided he will kidnap Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea and hold him responsible. Along the way, after yet another failed suicide attempt,Harold meets Fanny, a young girl who is caught up in bad relationships with both her boyfriend and her mother.

While the film does ask a lot of the viewer to accept the convenience and contrivance of the coincidence that allows Harold to actually kidnap Kamprad, it does set the film up for its second half, in which Harold, with the help of Fanny, tries to work out what he is going to doing with Kamprad now that he has him. All the while, Björn Granath, who plays Ingvar Kamprad hams it up with glee, never taking his kidnapping seriously, and continuing to come up with new ideas for Ikea furniture and refusing to have sympathy for Harold's misfortunes.

There are a few sub plots visited in the film, one depicting the fractured relationship between Harold and his drunken son, who just happens to have an apartment full of Ikea furniture. The other involves Fanny and her mother, whose one crowning glory is she was once a fine champion gymnast, but now lives the life of a drunken slut. This particular sub plot works the better of the two, culminating in a touching scene where Harold and Fanny allow Fanny's mother one moment of blissful nostalgia for her younger, more innocent, gymnastic days.

But the bulk of the film centres around Harold and his bumbling, unorganised kidnap of Kamprad, which features poor Harold trying to 1. work out what he actually wants to do with Kamprad now that he has him, and 2. getting a belligerent and contemptuous Kamprad to cooperate.

There are many absurdist moments of comedy in this film, including a scene where Harold hilariously dresses in bubble wrap to protect himself from a vicious dog, a scene where Kamprad escapes only to fall into ice, whereupon Harold gives chase and falls into the same ice - whereupon they engage in a icy, water bound fistfight. Towards the end of the film, Harold and Kamprad even spend a night in an Ikea showroom, choosing from the huge selection of beds, while Kamprad tells Harold where the switch to turn off the big industrial showroom lights is, like they are buddies.

I really enjoyed this very quirky and entertaining movie and its tone reminded me somewhat of Fargo, with its mix of offbeat, often absurd humour and moments of genuine drama. The only quibble I had with the film was the ending, which is more like an epilogue, involving Harold and his son - I thought it was a little too sweet.

Masterwork

[roylange · 10/10 · 3 October 2019]

In time this film will get the recognition it deserves. No it does not have any overexcited superheroes being shot by 30 year olds for 13 year olds. This a masterwork of control, in both directing and acting, finding healing comedic relief in a besieged man's existential crisis. Harold finding new colour against a bleak Norwegian winter landscape. This is one for the grown ups. A word of advice, please do not write negative reviews if you think Die Hard is art.