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

A Swedish comedy from Jonas Jonasson's bestselling novel. Allan Karlsson climbs out of the window of his care home on his hundredth birthday and leaves. At the bus station he picks up a suitcase by accident, containing a large amount of money belonging to a motorcycle gang. A chase begins, and Allan runs with an odd group who join him along the way. The narrative is split. Beside the present-day escape, his life is told in flashback, and he turns out to have been inside nearly every major event of the twentieth century: the Spanish civil war, the Manhattan Project, Stalin's table, the Gulag, Iran and the Berlin Wall. He does all of it without understanding any of it, holding no political opinion, and only because he knows about explosives. The humour is in that indifference: history proceeds and Allan walks past it. Robert Gustafsson plays Allan, playing both the young and the old man under age make-up. It was a large success in Sweden and became one of the country's most-watched productions. Enjoyable for anyone who likes black humour and absurd histories. The violence is mixed with jokes and coarse in places, and the second half starts repeating itself.