A dense and successful dramatisation of Ingvar Ambjørnsen’s first novel in the Elling-trilogy. His entire life, Elling has lived alone with his mother in a concrete flat somewhere in Oslo. The mother dies and he has the flat all to himself. In an attempt to control the chaotic life after the mother’s death, he shuts himself in, in a room with a chair, a table and a telescope, and watches his neighbours, following their lives and identifying himself with them. Ambjørnsen’s story about the withdrawn Elling is a thought provoking tale, full of tragic-comic episodes, humour, endless desolation and bitter satire. The 200 pages of the novel have been boiled down to a spell-binding monologue in about 1½ hour.