Cool and Crazy

This ‘documentary musical’ gives us a closer look at the fishing village of BerlevĆg on the Barents Sea, a place made famous by Isak Dinesen’s novel Babette’s Feast. Today, its musical group, a thirty-member male choir, is the village’s main tourist attraction. Norwegian director Jensen has returned to themes and places he’s featured in his films many times before – the wild, frozen landscape and its fascinating inhabitants living according to the rhythm of the sea, the quiet lifestyle, and a landscape trapped for most of the year in the bitter winter cold. Jensen captures his protagonists at work and in interviews, speaking to them and their families about life under extreme northern conditions and about the importance of music to them. He also portrays members of the choir singing in church, in the freezing snowy streets and also on the seashore – gazing at the midnight sun. He travels with his protagonists on a trip to Russia, where the choir, under the leadership of their conductor Oddo Marino Frantzen, enjoys exceptional success.