An Angry Old Man

 I have a lot of things I want to write about but I’m going to start with a movie review.  I don’t plug a lot of movies, but this one hit close to home.

It's aptly named “A Man Called Otto.”   Tom Hanks plays Otto.  It’s a character sketch of an old man.  Somehow, I identified.  Let’s back up.

My healthcare provider, which I am newly grateful for given our area’s recent shocking hospital closure, sent me a survey.  I always take surveys.  I think I want to be heard.  I also want to find out what the sender is interested in knowing. 

This survey was about my mental health.  Given the work I did during my career, I appreciate any organization that pays attention to its members’ mental health.  Without going back to find it and report on their questions, the gist of their inquiry was with whom and with what frequency did I have contact with other people.  They asked it several ways.  It didn’t take long.  As the movie opened on Otto’s life I thought of that survey.  Otto was profoundly alone.

We learn through flashbacks, visual representations of Otto’s own thoughts, that Otto was recently widowed.  He and his wife had no children.  He lived in the small apartment they had shared throughout their married life, among old neighbors who were once friends.  Except Otto had become estranged from virtually everyone. 

Otto was a self-appointed enforcer of subdivision rules.  When he encountered others on his daily “rounds” through the neighborhood, he barked his disapproval at those out of compliance.  Closing a gate no one else cared about keeping shut, correcting those who put garbage into the recyclables, etc..    But it wasn’t his peculiarities, his obsession with rules and details that set him apart from the people around him.

It was his rudeness.  Otto was an angry old man who had long ago stopped keeping mean-spirited thoughts to himself.  He spouted those rude thoughts loudly, in people’s faces, with an angry contorted face. 

Otto’s bad behavior wasn’t confined to the neighborhood.  He let loose on virtually anyone and everyone.  Particularly store clerks.  Not only was Otto mean, but he was also cheap.  He argued about money incessantly.  No wonder he was alone.  At first, I was disgusted with Otto.  But as I learned more about his past, I began to feel sorry for him.  He was deeply depressed.  He didn’t know how to cope with his singular existence.  He couldn’t control his grief following his wife’s death.  Otto’s depression was killing him.

He was most animated and positive on his trips to the cemetery.  He went daily with flowers, a lawn chair, and coffee in a thermos, settling in for long conversations with his deceased wife.  He reported on his day, and shared his thoughts about events, but mainly recalled memories of when they were together.  His tone, his facial expression, and his very being changed entirely when he talked to that granite headstone.

It's amazing an asshole like Otto can elicit compassion from the audience. I attribute it to a great script and an accomplished actor.  Otto was suicidal.  He survived three attempts.  Not unusual among those who ultimately die by suicide.  It was painful to watch.  Amazingly, that angry old man found hope in the depths of his despair.

It came in the form of a young immigrant couple, the wife Marisol mainly, who somehow shrugged off his insults.  Otto’s proven record of pushing people away by being insultingly rude just didn’t work with Marisol.  Maybe the language barrier helped.  Maybe it was naivete.  Whatever it was she persisted in maintaining contact with her awful neighbor despite his anger and unkind words.

Otto’s life was saved by Marisol and the others around him.  As she continued to uncover Otto’s story, coming to understand the person that was Otto’s wife, Otto slowly began to share his feelings.  It wasn’t due to his initiative.  His normally successful insults and angry retorts failed to shut Marisol up. And others helped as well.

One of Otto’s sworn enemies was the young man who rode his bike down the street throwing rolled-up shopping flyers, the ones stuffed with coupons, at each door.  They landed all over, mostly unread.  Otto collected them, put them in the trash, railed at the young man, and threatened him. 

One day, the young man stopped his bike and looked at him.  Rather than responding angrily, he shocked Otto by being civil.

“Hey, I know you.  Your wife was my teacher.  She was the best.  She was the first teacher to call me by my new name.  I’ll never forget her for that.”

Otto looked closely at the young man.  A closeup of his face suggested he was transgender.

“Is that right?”

It was all Otto could say.  He was completely disarmed.  He didn’t know how to handle kindness. 

Marisol and her family persisted in engaging Otto against all odds.  He didn’t want to talk about his past, his issues, his anger.  But somehow, they made him do so.  Otto helped them during emergencies, even babysitting their children.  He grudgingly cared for a neighborhood feral cat.  His life began to change.

“A Man Called Otto” is a story about overcoming mental illness.  It’s well-timed.  Our isolation during the pandemic was eye-opening.  Isolation can be devastating.  I can’t help but think that in Otto’s case, professional help and a good anti-depressant could have sped up the process, but the movie revealed the real key to being mentally healthy.  It’s positive interaction with those around you, finding community and being part of it, directing our thoughts away from ourselves to the welfare of others.  It’s not rocket science. We each learned about this firsthand right?

In early March 2020, my wife and I spent ten days in El Salvador volunteering at an eye clinic.  There was talk of this looming problem as we were leaving, and curiously, some people in O’Hare were wearing face masks as we departed. When we caught the plane home from the San Salvador airport, we felt lucky to be able to board because of the news of Covid’s spread. And when we landed back in O’Hare, it was chaos.  Everything had changed in ten days.

Schools, churches, businesses, and government offices were all closed.  Protocols at hospitals and health care providers were hard to navigate. We had our groceries delivered.  I remember driving down LaSalle Street, going nowhere, and all the parking spaces on both sides of the street were empty.  Thank God my wife and I had each other.  Where would I have been if I was alone like Otto?

We learned to attend church on Zoom.  Choir members learned to make solo voice recordings, and others learned to blend them together digitally.  It was surreal.  And lonely.  I missed my kids, my friends, and my life as it used to be.  We talked to our neighbors outside from ten feet away.  My wife was convinced if I contracted COVID I would be a goner.  She became very protective.  Before we had the vaccine there was little hope of real change.  But there were precious exceptions.

The YMCA in Ottawa allowed limited use of the pool for lap swimmers on a strict schedule and short time frames.  Upon entering the Y, we had our temperature taken.  We could not use the locker rooms.  We came in our swimsuits with sweatpants over them, stripped down to our trunks on the pool deck, and after 45 minutes of swimming exited the pool, pulled on our sweatpants, and left wet. 

As limited as it was, being back in the pool was a lifeline to normalcy.  I got to see my friends who were lap swimmers.  We mostly waved.  Just seeing them helped.  We yelled across the pool at each other.  It was the highlight of my day. 

Knock on wood I have not yet contracted COVID, and I’m vaccinated and boosted.  My wife now thinks I may make it after all.  Covid is still out there, but our lives have by and large returned to normal.  But didn’t we all learn something from the experience?

“A Man called Otto” is the story of a man learning one of life’s most elemental lessons in a very hard way.  Go see the movie.  See if you take from it what I did; that we must be kind to people who are hard to like.  Doing so might save their life.  Those people need us.  But more than perhaps anything else, we need each other.