Review of Harry Munter (1969)
An American company courts young Harry because of his apparent genius in electrical engineering. His parents are anxious to go and live in the States (over the lifeless landscape of rising Swedish projects), but Harry hesitates, full of thought. He toys with death on a railroad track, watches his grandmother’s demise and talks at length with a hypochondriac. His girlfriend is very attractive, but Harry spends more time constructing a platonic relationship with a paranoid woman who may be delusional, and with a friend of his grandmother’s.
Fairly non-genre, bleakly funny take on talent and its usual cost. Enigmatic and loosely structured yet loaded with parallels and fascinating moments, such as an isolated shot where the normally reserved Harry skillfully drums out furious music with his bare hands. I think of this whenever I see new high-rises on the way up.
References here: Naked (1993).