Customer Reviews

Cool & Crazy

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I saw this in Oslo in the original Norwegian with English subtitles. I hope this version isn't dubbed... It's one of the great movies that I have seen... I realized a few days after I saw it that the movie is actually a documentary, but it didn't feel like a documentary when I saw it, so I didn't even notice that that's what it is. I've never seen anything quite like it. In a small fishing village far North of the Arctic Circle in Norway, there's by some miracle a men's choir. This is just a look into the lives, thoughts and even bodies of a group of very ordinary, mostly middle-aged men whose livelihood is not easily won. The climate in this village is harsh to say the least. And to keep their sanity this choir was formed I think early in the 20th Century, and has continued to this day. The movie masterfully contrasts the very human lives of these men with the unearthly music that they come together every week to make for what audiences this village has to offer. And it does this without any commentary... the movie consists wholly of film clips of the singers being fed dinner by their wives, or in the bathtub discussing their first loves, or discussing how they love the water while they're out on their fishing boats... or arguing politics. I hadn't laughed so hard in a long time... it's a film with great heart and great hope.

Made in 2001, "Cool and Crazy" records the daily activities of the members of male choir group in Berlevog, Norway. The town's population is about 1,200, and it is located at the seaside of the cold Nowegian Sea.

The film opens with a really surreal scene; the chorus members are standing upright by the stormy seaside (with many rugged rocks and splashing white waves), singing proudly in the blizzard. Yes, the English title "cool and Crazy" is no exaggeration. The group has several generations of singers, and many are working as fishermen there, or at the factory where they slice fish with machine. This documentary film follows the life of a few selected members (the eldest being 96 years old), mainly those of the elder ones.

Just as "Buena Vista Social Club" did, the members tell their own life story before the camera; one of them recollects his first love; another his days as a drug addict in the past; or another his dream of becoming an entertainer or a scholar when he was young. Among these interviews, you will hear them singing their numbers at various places, and the film ends with their tour to Russia, and the concert held there.

To be honest, as a documentary, "Cool and Crazy" is too slow to many of us (by "us" I mean most of the people outside Norway). Though I know it has become a commercial hit in Norway, the film per se is not, I am afraid, as interesting as the subject matter itself. The film introduces many engaging personalities of the people living there, but the way it presents them is not particularly engaging or original. The film goes on very quietly, as if unwilling to step into the deeper emotions of the singers. Many of them say they have nothing to regret, but it is true? All you can do is accept their views, but that is the fashion the film adapted. Probably we should respect the decision.

The film's greatest merit lies in the descriptions of the life of the people living in the small town of Norway, and in the occasional revelation of their own feelings about the place. All of them are proud of their group, but each member's reaction to the life in the town betrays slight difference. As a portrait of those very likable people, "Cool and Crazy" works best.

This is a documentary film, but set within such a tight, small-town scene that you find yourself treating choirmembers as though characters (indeed, personal family members) in a naturalist drama. Compare this film to "Buena Vista Social Club" (Habana's Malecon, etc.) and you'll find occasional scenes and details hilarious. Given the featherweight subtlety of this work (some have compared it to watching paint dry), insignificant occurances strike like lightning bolts out of the calm, and shock, surprise, or worry us. Okay - I'll reveal the moment of highest tension - when the group takes off in a bus toward Murmansk (?) to perform in public, I was as anxiety-stricken as though my own family members were on their way and I feared failure and embarrassment, etc. Darn it, they just didn't seem ready for the big stage!

The film left me hoping for more works in this derivative (Social Club) style - and imagining other possibilities. Still, to appreciate this film, det hjaelper om du aer norskaetling (it helps to be of norwegian or scandanavian origin)! For optimal viewing, a cold, snowy winter night and a few glasses of akvavit, too, might be in order, along with a pile of furs and a fire in the hearth... and members of Chicago's Polar Bear Club might enjoy it after their annual naked jump through the ice on Lake Michigan (do they still do that?)... or it could be viewed after Fargo, though that's not one of my favorites...

I love this movie.
perhaps it's because I lived in Finnmark, where it was filmed.
perhaps it's because I wandered Berlevåg with some of those guys and they treated us to ice cream.

the scenery is beautiful, the guys are hilarious, and the singing is usually wonderful. (only on a few songs are they slightly out of tune)

I adored this film. Like others, I found it slow at first, but once immersed in the lives of these remote villagers, I was hooked. It's heartbreaking, uplifting, funny, and inspirational. What a wonderful contrast to the life we lead in the corporate, TV-driven USA. I'm sending it to all my (grown) kids.

If you think Cool and Crazy is good, I recommend you check out another film from Scandinavia, Screaming Men by Mika Ronkainen. Yes, it's another film about a choir, but it's totally something you've never experienced before. It's a choir that screams national anthems and children's songs... Totally unique stuff!

My wife hated this film, but I loved it. Not sure why exactly, as it has lots going against it.

The film focuses on a few of the 30-odd members of the Berlevag Men's Choir. They live in a small arctic fishing village on the northern tip of the Norwegian coast, and seem to have no lives to speak of other than their involvement in the choir. A couple of the older gents (the 96-year-old kind of old) have wives, but the rest seem to live in mateless isolation. The film alternates between handheld monologues (in which the men talk about themselves) and set pieces in which the choir -- dressed in bowties, parkas or natty sailing caps -- sing of the natural glories of Scandinavia whilst perched comically upon enormous gasoline tanks, along the winter-whipped Atlantic, or enshrouded in beard-encasing blizzards. The men are quite ordinary -- a fisherman who giggles as he pulls his catch from the sea; a former druggie; a self-styled communist who weeps when pondering wartime Russian sacrifice; an irreverent, foul-mouthed (and fumble-fingered) church organist. On their way to a concert, all (except for the communist) stare aghast at the environmental devastation of the Murmansk industrial area. Dwellers in a land with a harsh beauty, they are clearly in love with it and inured to its limitations, both social and scenic.

I found these men fascinating and their music beautiful. Unintended ironies abound. The men sing of the beauty of pine bough and flower blosssom in a place that is stark and unforgiving much of the year. They sing of church in a land where religion seems to have no hold on anyone. The most beautiful thing they have is their spare Nordic furnishings and their camaraderie. Somehow, though, of all of this coalesces into a film that held my attention and made me love this group of very real, very special men.

We originally saw this documentary while on a Norwegian fjord cruise near the town where the chorus lives. We enjoyed it thoroughly and decided we wanted to share it with others in our retired community. It is fun and educational as it portrays the chorus and its members in this remote village. It is inspirational as well.

Cool and Crazy was a wonderful film about the Berlevag men's chorus. The original film interspersed interviews with the mostly aging chorus members, living in a tiny Norwegian fishing village, with scenes of the chorus performing songs against the local scenery (And, as the town is located above the arctic circle, the conditions shown are often quite severe). It was a charmer.

Well, the sequel features the chorus during a U.S. tour. Regrettably, the chorus is in New York city on September 11, 2001. The events of that tragic day inevitably overwhelm the film. The director works very hard to absorb, honor, and make sense out of the American reaction to the attack, but it is clearly not the kind of film that he had been prepared to make. Many of the Norwegian chorus members express concern about what the attack will do to America, and their comments are eerily prescient as we look back now six years later. Watching this is worthwhile, but not "fun."

I do recommend the movie as a fascinating look at 9/11--as it happened--from the perspective of these kindly Norwegians. It is still a pleasure to spend time with these men, but don't look for the joy that so many of us loved in the original.

I have read several reviews that ask the question, "Why was this film made"? I myself found that question looming in my mind as the hour and twenty minute feature seemed to drag near the middle, only to give off the sensation that it was picking up steam at the end, when in actuality it was doing nothing of the sort. So, "Why was this film made"? I think that is a great question for those watching Heftig og begeistret to ask themselves. This reviewer is proud of director Knut Erik Jensen for giving us this powerful image of hope, brotherhood, and inspiration with this all male choir, but I do not think that Jensen did enough to bring a gripping story to the table. Let me pose this question to you, "Do audience members need more in a documentary than just a straight forward story to maintain interest"? My answer is yes, and this is where Jensen failed. Heftig og begeistret was a good documentary, but it was far from great. Jensen did a horrible job with the story and dedication of the subjects. It was great to hear the songs, but over time, those songs seemed dull, overwhelming, and a bit precocious. From the opening scene where our men are singing their hearts out in a blinding snow, I knew that I was hooked, but as the film developed I lost interest. Why? Jensen never took us, the audience members, to the next level. He kept the playing field level and ultimately hurt the overall tone of the film. Was this a movie about the music or about the men in the choir? The world may never know.

Again, I would like to state that Jensen did a phenomenal job of finding an interesting story about this group of men who have definitely seen hard times and how they coped with that through music, but it was as if the all male choir were a bunch of the most boring men ever created. Jensen gave us the music superbly, but it was the characters, the subjects, that I knew nothing about by the end of the film. In the mix we had a 97 year old man who still had his driver's license, we had a large man in a tub singing classic American songs, we had old men who were once heartthrobs in their youth, we had some tension between the youth of the choir and the veteran singers, and we even had an ex-drug addict that had only been clean for eleven years. Did Jensen develop these interesting stories at all? Nope, he left them on the table. It was obvious that these singers were willing to talk further about it (see the political man who missed his political days), but Jensen seemed to clear away from those heartfelt moments and head straight back into interesting places that he could have the choir sing. To me, the music was defined at the beginning of the film, I wanted to be introduced and hear the stories of these individual men. They were all captivating, yet Jensen seemed to ignore them completely.

By ignoring the major subjects of this documentary, Jensen became unsuccessful in creating any sort of tension towards the end. Without giving the ending away, I felt like Jensen was coloring in the lines. Instead of being bold outside the lines, he chose to create no moment of sympathy, emotion, nervousness, or sadness. Jensen took our subjects from point A to point B to point C without asking us to become involved in any way shape or form. I can see how national sentiment had made this film into a huge success in Norway, but for everyone else watching (i.e. ME) more was necessarily needed. I wanted to feel for these guys. I wanted to know if they were going to do well as they traveled, or just find themselves loved in their own city. There was no story, mostly in part to no development of the subjects. When you watch modern documentaries (oddly, this film was made in 2001), you want it to play out similar to any Hollywood feature film. You want suspense, realism, and drama, alas, with Heftig og begeistret you get nothing of the sort.

Overall, I must ask the question again, "Why was this film made"? My final answer Alex, is that Jensen wanted to show how troubling times and a changing economy can still produce happiness in even the coldest places of Earth. I think that Jensen wanted to show human dedication and how something as simple as singing can unite a population. With that said, Jensen demonstrated that perfectly in this film, but he did not create a good documentary. When you make a film of this nature, I feel that you must look within the group, examine the choir participants and hear each one of their stories to bring about an ending that will grip your heart. The only thing that this film gripped was my attention span as it attempted to leave the room at rocket speed. Again, I do not want to sound negative about this film because the music was excellent and the men singing did bring about a feeling of honesty, but I needed more. With documentaries becoming a bigger staple of the film community, one expects a bit more than what Heftig og begeistret handed to us. I want to see reality and people, not just another song and dance routine!

Grade: ** out of *****