A Man Called Otto: The new Tom Hanks film from director Marc Forster

The latest movie from Tom Hanks is a little unusual, and not just because it sees one of Hollywood’s all-time nice guys playing a character the poster bills as the “grumpiest man in America”.

“It’s got nothing to do with people from outer space, there are no helicopters, no cities were destroyed in the making of A Man Called Otto,” the actor said at a culture festival in Los Angeles earlier this month.

And he’s quite right.

In a cinema landscape that is dominated by blockbusters — whether it’s superheroes, James Cameron’s 3D aliens or movies so fast and furious we can barely keep up — it’s rare to get a low-key comedy-drama that deals with real life.

A Man Called Otto has been adapted from Swedish author Fredrik Backman’s best-selling 2012 novel, A Man Called Ove, which became a 2015 film of the same name from director Hannes Holm.

The book and that first movie resonated around the world, resulting in an Oscar nomination for best foreign film, and it is around this time the story landed on the radar of Hanks and his actor-producer wife, Rita Wilson.

With Hanks attached to an English-language version, there was always a certain inevitability about the chances of this project making the big screen, and that eventually happened after Swiss director Marc Forster was brought on board.

Forster had previously helmed Monster’s Ball, Stranger Than Fiction and World War Z, to name a few, so brought considerable experience to a film that doesn’t have your typical Hollywood plot.

As the titular Otto, we find Hanks as a curmudgeonly widower, who has it in for everything and everyone, whether it’s a bloke who stretches his groin in public while wearing running tights, or a woman whose annoying little dog pees on his verge.

Combined with the recent passing of his wife, the light of his life, it’s a straightforward decision for Otto to escape the travails of modern life by taking his own.

Standing in the way of completing the task are the relationships Otto forms with the very same people who he’d dismissed as bothersome.

A suicide storyline might make perfect sense in a Scandi black comedy, but it’s unexpected for a Hollywood-Hanks vehicle.

Get the tone slightly wrong and it’s very easy to offend, let alone fail to generate humour or heart.

This is why Forster is grateful for the actor bringing his lead character to life.

“Tom is one of the best actors alive, he’s just extraordinary,” the director tells The West Australian over a Zoom call.

“And he is truly the nicest man in Hollywood, which is what you want from someone to play this role, because, otherwise, if someone plays this role and you really dislike them, you’re not interested in watching the movie.

“Tom can play grumpy, but it feels fine and charming and watchable, and I think that’s very important.”

Even more important, as far as Forster was concerned, was the dual Oscar-winner’s ability to find humour in scenes where it might seem counterintuitive.

And, crucially, to do so without undermining the drama.

“Tom comes from a background of comedies in the 80s that begun with Splash, where he did a lot of physical comedies, and he hasn’t done that recently, so he can dive into his comedy skills and his dramatic skills,” Forster explains.

Even for a director as accomplished as Forster, working with an actor of Hanks’ calibre was instructional.

“You know, when his time comes to be on the set in the morning . . . he’s very meditative,” the director reveals.

“He just stays (on set) and suddenly realigns to the scene, and, then, when you’re ready, he just steps up and you do the scene.

“And he’s so focused, and so ultimately kind and respectful, and . . . then when I watch him as a director I’m saying, ‘OK, what are the ideas? What am I missing? How can we make it better? What’s the magic’, and it’s a constant conversation with your actor.”

In this instance, the filmmaker says the creative conversation with Hanks was mutually beneficial.

“It’s a dialogue and you inspire each other,” Forster agrees.

“And we both had this ignition of creativity that was always flowing, and I think that made this experience very special for both of us.”

Now, the director hopes the special experience of making A Man Called Otto translates to a viewing experience that has even more poignancy for audiences around the world.

“I hope that they will be inspired, and feel like being part of a community is important,” Forster says.

“To come together and share their lives and share their stories, and open their hearts, because I think as much as technology has brought us good things, it has also brought us loneliness and heartache and a lot of other things, which I think got exponential growth through the pandemic.

“And, hopefully, we can come out at the end and know now that it might be nice to turn your phone off and be in nature with some friends and talk.”

A Man Called Otto is in cinemas now.