Here is Harold

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. Kamprad goes back to his empire and Harold to his -- his broken son.
     But it's in a new spirit. Fishing alone on the ice -- and futilely -- he gives a huge laugh at the absurdity of life and the impossibility of being self-sufficient. He draws back from despair and now moves on to give his son the help he once focused on his wife. Kamprad has his store but Harold still has family.