Cool and Crazy

By Anthony Quinn

8 February 2002

The last thing you'd  think  of  calling  a  documentary  about  a  middle-aged Norwegian male-voice choir is Cool and Crazy, but then director Knut Erik Jensen plainly enjoys upsetting expectations. Already a huge  hit  in  Norway, his film is about a place as much as the communal pleasures of music. Berlevag, a fishing village on the north coast of Norway, is buffeted  the  year round by arctic weather, yet not even a blizzard  will  prevent  these  doughty old geezers from standing shoulder to shoulder, beards  glistening  with  frost, to raise their voices in choral union.

The spectacle is strangely moving.   Individuals  emerge  from  the  group:  an elderly gent who fancies himself a swinger, a die-hard politico  still  defending the Soviets, an agnostic church organist who admits he's "not very good"  yet feels driven to play. There's something so modest  and  likeable  about  these ageing  choirboys  that,  by  the  time  they  prepare  to  sing  at  a  festival  in Murmansk, you're hoping that the conductor's  despairing  cries  at  rehearsal ("You sound like shit!") are nerves before their performance takes  the  place by storm. Long may they warble.