Huutajat - Screaming Men

I enjoyed experiencing this fun film today at the Full Frame Documentary Festival here in Durham (we're blessed to have this 4-day festival hailed by many including the New York Times as the country's best documentary film festival. This is a story of the Finnish Screaming Male Choir, conceived I believe in the late 1980s and led by a man, Petri Sirviö, whose idea it is to harness the scream and make music out of it. Petri's wry humor is omnipresent and the stunning photography, such as of the choir performing on ice with a massive ice breaker in the distance that they have just alighted from, make this a joy to watch.

--Dilip Barman April 3, 2004

I was excited last night to see this film after reading the positive reviews. Well, I don't know what everyone else has seen, by the print shown at my local film festival was in Finnish (I'm guessing), WITHOUT subtitles. The film was about 65% interviews and documentary observation of practices, auditions, concert set up, etc; 25% performances, and 10% interviews in English. So, basically, they spent about 75% of the film talking, and I couldn't understand a lick.

For better or worse, it actually looked like it would be interesting if I could have understood any of it. It was maddening.

If this comes to your town, I would STRONGLY suggest checking with your theater to ask about this issue. There is soooo much dialogue that I cannot recommend seeing this foreign language film unless some kind of accomodation has been made to translate it.

Good luck!

One of the funniest films I've ever seen. Are they conceptual art, are they music? Who cares? They do it cause they want to and doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks. Great tongue in cheek look at the view Finnish culture has to how the rest of the world see them. An absolute must see.

I'll never forget coming across this accidentally and by the end of the film I'm standing in my living room and crying. It's so visceral and emotional. It's a must.

You'll love this if you appreciate dry humor, modern art, send-ups of modern art, the mockumentary tradition, and subverting the dominant paradigm. This documentary affectionately shows us the genre-busting Finnish men's choir "tapping" adroitly along the fine line between clever and stupid. The central concept: 25 sets of strong lungs performing indescribably strange and funny adaptations of well-known songs, such as national anthems. The effect is surprisingly powerful. Unlike much high-concept modern art, where the idea is better than the result, this work stands on its own. These impassioned fits of madness force you to perceive things anew in surprising ways. The audiences shown in the film typically began by looking puzzled, then went wild with laughter and applause. The group's leader is a hoot. Fortunately, he speaks English when the group is touring in France, Japan, etc. The English subtitles of his remarks in Finnish clearly did not serve him well; several times, we wished we knew what was making the Finns in the audience laugh so hard. (A perennial problem: Why can't movie-makers provide better subtitles?) See this movie.