There was a time in my life when I looked forward to being a cantankerous old man.
I have long since given up that plan, but there is an appeal to being at a point in your life when you don't care what anybody else thinks about what you do or say.
I think the turning point was when Eric Clapton released the song "Blue Eyes Blue" in 1999. In this song, the singer laments how his estranged partner is wholly responsible for his unhappiness.
I thought, 'you're a little old (Clapton was 56 at the time) to be blaming other people for your unhappiness, aren't you?'
To be fair, Clapton didn't write the song, he merely recorded it for the soundtrack of the movie Runaway Bride.
Happiness or misery are choices. Of course, sometimes it's OK to choose to be miserable for a while. Processing grief, for example, requires going through some tough times and the misery can be sweet in its own weird way. Temporarily.
While my attraction to the curmudgeon lifestyle passed a long time ago, the cantankerous old man redemption movie trope is still very appealing (think Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino).
So, when I saw Netflix had added the 2022 film A Man Called Otto to its roster, I had to check it out. Usually, you can't go wrong with a Tom Hanks film.
Hanks is, as always, good in the lead role as the irascible Otto Anderson, a widower who sees nothing but idiots around him and is at war with an evil real estate company trying to take over his beloved neighbourhood to make way for characterless condos.
Overall, the film kind of falls a bit flat. I'm told there is a much better Swedish version, but who wants to read subtitles? Or overdubs? Forget about it. (Maybe there's still a cranky old man lurking in me somewhere.)
It's a good reminder, though, that things are rarely as bad as we sometimes perceive them to be and personal redemption is always possible.
