The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Not having seen many Swedish comedies since the demise of that madcap Ingmar Bergman, I was delighted by this biting black comedy. But like Bergman, I suspect director Felix Herngren — and source novelist Jonas Jonasson — is using hero Allan Karlssen as an embodiment of the Swedish national soul. 

The key clue may be Allan’s involuntary (and sloppy) sterilization, which left him reduced and in pain but grateful for his removal from the temptations and tribulations of romance. At film’s end he envies the dithering eternal student Benny for being able to make the romantic connection Allan was denied. The neutered Karlssen embodies Sweden’s pretence to neutrality. 

When the 100-year-old man escapes his old folks’ home for an open-ended adventure he personifies the freedom of the unattached, the unrestrained. The old man stumbles through all sorts of dangers and disasters, blissfully unawares. By taking off with a suitcase stuffed with money he triggers a bikers’ gang chase and a number of deaths and disasters. Totally without guile himself, he hooks up with another solitary man, then another, and blithely blunders through to a happy ending. 

The flashbacks to his earlier life replay that drama — an innocent unaware of all the disasters he is causing. His passion for exploding things clearly alludes to the Swedish genius Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite. The child Allan delights in blowing things up. His first targets, of increasing significance, culminate in the explosion of the merchant who underpaid Allan’s widow mother for her Faberge egg. For that he’s sent to an asylum and sterilized by a social biologist who imagines Allan’s resemblance to the statistical Negro. Allan’s last adventure begins when he blows up the fox who killed his pet cat.

Allan’s life is defined by his passion for explosions. When he fights in the Spanish civil war he has none of the revolutionary ardor of his doomed friend Escobar. Allan just wants to blow things up, which is a suspect form of neutrality, destruction without a principle. His last bridge explosion ingratiates him with Franco who thinks Allan saved his life — when he in fact imperilled it. Allan drinks and parties with Franco and later Truman and Stalin with the neutral’s lack of political engagement. But not without dangerous effect.

For neutrality can be as explosive, as destructive, as taking an impassioned position can be. Allan’s innocence proves dangerous when he helps Oppenheimer invent the atomic bomb and lets himself be swept off to Russia. His mature years are spent as a double agent — another dangerous, self-deceiving form of neutrality — as he passes information between Russia and the West, fatuous stuff which favours and imperils neither side but nonetheless leads to many political assassinations. If Allan is too dumb — he quit school at 9 — to have political awareness and moral awareness, he has an instinct for self-service. That makes this neutral exceedingly dangerous for everyone, however blessed his own accidental success may make him seem.

The violent macho biker who eventually joins Allan’s entourage qualifies by losing his memory. That’s his form of neutering. It enables him to live with Allan, whom he had planned to kill, but also renders him incapable of responsible thought or action. For the lion will lie down with the lamb -- and, more to the point, rise unfed -- only if the lion forgets his nature. He won't be converted by the lamb's example of virtue.
     In contrast to Allan’s ignorance, the polymath Benny is neutered and neutralized by his excess of education, his inability to commit to any one discipline. He is an "almost" anything. At least Benny outgrows his neutrality by venturing into a relationship with Gunilla (and her 40-year-old elephant Sonja). Ultimately Allan’s greatest gift is encouraging Benny not to stay neutralized like he is.

In this vision Sweden has pretended to be neutral but bears a heavy responsibility for the violence and destruction to which she has been party — however “innocently.” The ostensibly neutral end up serving those who exploit them. Neutrality is thus not a moral advantage but an abdication of responsibility.
                                          ***

     Now comes a tangent. Indeed this film proves prophetic. Sweden's latest blunder in its pretence to innocence and neutrality is her premature recognition of the state of Palestine. Pretending neutrality in the Middle East war,  she in fact takes a very dangerous position. By recognizing the Palestinian state Sweden is encouraging the Palestinians to not make peace with Israel. In contrast, Spain's early recognition of the Palestinian state was made contingent upon their negotiations with Israel.
     Sweden is also ignoring the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States. The new “Palestine” lacks the first three of the four criteria for statehood. It doesn’t have a permanent population, because millions of its citizens insist on their right of return to swamp Israel, which would end that legitimate state's Jewish identity. It doesn’t have a defined territory because the Palestinians have refused to negotiate borders for peace with Israel, as per the terms ending the 1967 war.  Palestine lacks a government because the terrorist Hamas runs Gaza and Abbas is in the tenth year of his four-year term in the West Bank. Even after the disasters of the Gaza war an election is expected to prefer Hamas in both areas. The new Hamas-Al Fatah unity government fractures daily. In recognizing the state of Palestine Sweden is pre-empting a peaceful treaty with Israel and recognizing a terrorist state. Also a racist one, as even the “moderate” Abbas has promised there will not be a single Jew in the new Palestine. In the inflamed Middle East Sweden’s “neutrality” is as blissfully ignorant, irresponsible and destructive as Allan Karlssen is — without his silver-haired charm and his defence, senility.