The Bothersome Man (2007)

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This absurdist black comedy from Norway is unlike any other movie you’ll see this year, but as allegory, it’s a bit too literal-minded.

Like the Swedish/Norwegian Kitchen Stories, it's a thoughtful Scandinavian film with a bent sense of humor.

Is it a religious allegory? Political statement? Horror film? Perhaps all three, perhaps none.

This is a bizarre social satire that mixes the mild-mannered humor of Jacques Tati with stunningly gory slapstick.

If only all the production elements added up to great movie. Instead, they seem like window dressing on a sill looking out to nowhere.

Bothersome Man is a stark yet strangely lyrical, multi-layered dirge for the absurdity of human fate in the face of figuratively deadening social conformity, and on the other hand, literal mortality.

An absurdly funny dystopian allegory that can proudly hold its own next to Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 and Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

A deliberate, thought-provoking, existential meditation on the curse of creating a neverending heaven on Earth.

[A] pitch-black, bone-dry comedy.