When I got the book I google-imaged the title to see what the characters as portrayed in the movie looked like. Rolf Lassgård as the later Ove hit the mark squarely. Bahar Pars as Parvaneh, ditto. But Filip Berg as the younger Ove is lanky and angular. In the book Sonja says when she first saw him "his shoulders were broad and his arms so muscular that they stretched the fabric of his shirt." (129) Fail.
I was startled that Sonja was pictured with some kind of androgynous short hairstyle. In the book Sonja was born in 1956 and died in 2014, so early twenty-ish when Ove met her on the train? 1976-ish? Beautiful young women did not wear French style short hair in 1976. The book:
She had brown hair and blue eyes and red shoes and a big yellow clasp in her hair. (116)
How you going to have a big clasp in your hair if it's short huh?
But then he saw her on the platform with all her rich auburn hair and her blue eyes...(128)
That's not "rich." What was the director thinking?
Sonja never wore red shoes in the movie either.
Pissed me off.
Another bizarre unforced casting error is with the doctor at the hospital when Ove collapses from an enlarged heart. In the book the doctor is male; in the movie, female. Why, director, why?
The director bastardizes the train courtship. The first time they meet Ove has fallen asleep and wakes up across from Sonja. The train conductor comes through collecting tickets. Ove has neither a ticket or the money to purchase one. Sonja buys one for him. Uh, no. Ove looks for her on the train after that but can't find her except for one last time. Nothing like the book where he deliberately takes the train that he knows she is going to be on, an hour and a half out of his way (!), day after day after day, "every day for three months." (131)
The director, Hans Holm is the man's name, drains all of the charm out of the hospital scene. (326-9). Parvaneh is not tear and mascara-streaked, she does not waddle numbly into Ove's room. There is no "woman, you better pull yourself together." Holm has Parvaneh's laughing fit causing her to go into labor. No! In the book, the girls are asleep and Parvaneh and Ove are sitting on the couch when she suddenly grips his arm as with a metal vise. "OUCH!" says Ove. "SHUSH!" replies Parvaneh and he drives her to the hospital.
Obviously a movie director has to cut some scenes from a book. Hans Holm makes ONE inspired cut, the scene where Ove collapses in confrontation with burglars (322) that leads to his hospitalization. That was needless in the book. Holm has Ove collapsing just walking home from Parvaneh's.
But then there are these:
The graveyard scene: Ove goes to the graveyard every day (that he can get away) and talks to Sonja. This has searing resonance for me that I described in a short story "Evening Walk."
Parvaneh doesn't find this out until sometime later. In one of the most touching scenes Ove is telling Sonja that, "Well, yes, I told them one might like a bit of peace and quiet like a normal human being. But they don't listen." "Hi Sonja!" Parvaneh says. "Hajj!" says the three-year old; "Hi," you're supposed to say "Hi" says her older sister. "Hi Sonja, Hi Sonja, Hi Sonja, Hi Sonjah," say Patrick, Jimmy, Adrian, and Mirsad in unison. That whole transcendent human scene, cut.
-"And so will I"; "And I will," "And me!" (301)
-the iPad whisper (315)
"the BEST ONE" (320)
Does a director have to add scenes, too? There is one that I liked. In the book Fredrik Backman writes that when Parvaneh discovers Ove dead in his bed that Ove had the most peaceful look on his face that she had ever seen. It's subtle. In the movie, Ove wakes from the dead on the train across from Sonja. You see his face only at first then Sonja's stockinged legs (stupid brown shoes) then her face smiling, not laughing, smiling beatifically. Back to Ove's face which breaks into a smile of wonder. Holm then does something very sweet, he shoots in close-up down the narrow aisle between the two railway bench seats and shows Sonja's hand and forearm and Ove's reaching to each other, like God created man by Michelangelo. The arms across the aisle would form the Christian cross.
But there are two scenes added that do violence to the tone of the book. Both concern the welfare department's attempt to remove Ove's old friend Rune from his wife's care. In the first, one of the "white shirts" drives into the community. He and Ove have a verbal confrontation. The actor, who we have seen previously, affects a Nazi-like accent and says to Ove that he knows all about Ove, all of his letters, all about Sonja's injury and then death. You're always blaming someone else, Ove, the white shirt says, when you're just "not enough."
The other is directly related. Earlier in the book Parvaneh opens the door to Ove's house and rushes past him to the bathroom without a greeting or any explanation. In the movie, Holm has Ove showing up unannounced at Parvaneh's front door. Parvaneh opens a crack and peeks her head out in surprise. Ove wants to use Parvaneh's house phone to call about Rune. After the phone call, Ove sits down next to Parvaneh, who says "I'm tired of you." (?)
I liked the movie with those drawbacks but not as well as the book, which is perfect.