DVD
30 Second Bottom Line: A men's choir connects generations, capturing the spirit of voices and the soul.
Story Line: This documentary is interspersed with music sung by a choir, often in outdoor settings amid raging snow storms, under a midnight sun or singing in the rain-quite different from that of Gene Kelley.
The singing is wonderful and the settings are spectacularly breathtaking. The swimmers in the polar bear club have nothing on these gents for hardiness. You get a glorious feeling as you watch the men, some in their late eighties and nineties accept those members in their thirties into their "private club." The director of the choir is in a wheelchair and it's no big deal.
These men live in a seemingly idyllic village that is in reality far from perfect. Their town of Berlevag, a small Norwegian fishing village not far from the North Pole, has seen its better days. Once there were fleets of boats and numerous canneries, now most are gone. Like the 7 UP series of documentaries, I'd be interested to see what happens to the town and its people in the future.
In the choir are two brothers, one 87 who is picked up and driven by his 97-year-old sibling Elnar, who observes that he's never hit a man or been punched by one. One man in the choir has been a member for over 65 years. These old men reminisce about the past yet they still are open to bringing in new blood in the form of younger members. Referring to his bedroom, one says, "This used to be a working room, now it's a museum."
The men are spiritually close in spite of their age differences, various personalities or checkered pasts. One is a recovering drug addict who has been clean for eleven years. You have to wonder if the difference maker in his successful recovery to date is the choir. He does have the general desire to not be a junkie and his girlfriend backs up her moral support with tough love. Possibly the strangest man is one who gets a pain in his head when the weather changes. When he was six, a bomb fell during WWII and he has been affected ever since. He professes to be an agnostic with his observation "What do we know?"
Tell Me More About It: Songs bring people together in the here and now as well as the hereafter. More often than not when they bring back old memories, the thoughts are about the "good times."
The sense of community one feels is something that lingers with you long after the credits have rolled. One can draw some of the same conclusions about what they should do with their lives from seeing Cool and Crazy, that they do in reflecting on the events of September 11, 2001. Both are real life, but one is just a movie while the other is surrounded by profound sadness. To the extent we can use movies as a means to make positive changes in our lives, as compared to violent events, the world will be a better place.
If there is a message for me that I am able to take from the film, it's that there is value in the simple things. It's great to have a nice house, plenty of money, a good-looking car and in general not to be financially poor and living in third world conditions. However, without core values, at some point, we will realize that life is incomplete. Since we can't turn back the clock, the time to realize that is now rather than in our dying days. There is something to the expression "Why strive for more when you have a fulfilling life?"
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