Harvie John Flaus Krumpetzki is born “upside down and back to front” in Poland in 1922, a birth that foreshadows the unusual path his life will take. Geoffrey Rush provides the voice of the Narrator, guiding us through a tale told in fragments and memories. From the start, his mother pulls him from school and helps him gather pieces of information called fakts, a notebook hanging around his neck that collects the moments and details that will shape his perceptions.
As war breaks out, tragedy strikes when his home is set ablaze in the night and his parents freeze to death. Harvie escapes to Australia as a refugee, settling in Spotswood, Victoria, and he eventually changes his name to Harvie Krumpet to begin anew. The film tracks a life defined by misfortune, yet propelled by stubborn optimism.
Harvie’s childhood is marked by hardship and medical challenges, including a diagnosis of Tourette syndrome. He survives a brutal accident in which his skull is damaged after a man punches him, and later a lightning strike on a tram leaves him magnetized. He also battles asthma, a consequence he accrues from years of heavy smoking. Despite these obstacles, Harvie maintains a resilient, idiosyncratic outlook on life, moving through the world with curiosity and humor.
A pivotal moment finds Harvie sitting in a park beside a statue, hearing an exhortation that he later brands as Carpe diem. In this moment, the statue—voiced by Kamahl as Horace—sparks a cascade of changes: he explores nudism, joins a nudist group, embraces vegetarianism, and undertakes bold animal-rights rescues. The sequence marks a turning point where he chooses to live more openly and boldly, even as life continues to hand him blows.
Health and luck remain fragile. Harvie develops cancer in one testicle, and in the hospital he meets Val, a nurse who becomes his wife in Ward 9 of the cancer ward. They dream of a family, but infertility strains their relationship: Harvie’s one remaining testicle fails to produce enough sperm, leading them to adopt a child instead. They welcome Ruby, a thalidomide survivor with deformed limbs, who moves to America to pursue a legal career.
Val later dies of a stroke, and Harvie’s health declines into Alzheimer's disease, forcing him into a nursing home. There he shares a room with Hamish, a 94-year-old man with Alzheimer’s who once burned his ear by mistaking an iron for a phone. The two often clash, masking their loneliness with feigned hostility, until a startling moment of grace appears.
In a sequence that blends bitter humor with tenderness, Harvie encounters a woman he has never met while wandering the corridors—an encounter that culminates in a morphine-driven tragedy: the woman chooses suicide. Harvie’s reaction—he steadies himself, and finally thanks her with a quiet, human gesture. He then strips down and sits at a bus stop, knowing the bus may never come, and yet choosing to be present in the moment.
The film closes with a final, stark “fakt” that frames Harvie’s world view: Life is like a cigarette. Smoke it to the butt. This line caps a life lived in bright, stubborn defiance of misfortune, a life told through tiny, precise details—the fakts—and through the unlikely, patient resilience of a man who keeps moving forward, even when the world forgets him.
