Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Arctic Cabaret

ARCTIC CABARET

6/10

Pa hau i havet : Norway 2004 : Knut Erik JENSEN : 102 mins

A burlesque, high-spirited and colourful encounter with the local cabaret community on Magerya. We become familiar with the local cabaret heroes old, young, women and men and hear their stories. Scenes from the cabarets deliver racy lines and juicy jokes. This is a journey in time and space, brimming with intimate and human portraits from past and present, driven by song and music against a backdrop of arctic landscape. A phenomenon of surplus energy has become a phenomenon of survival.
(from official Troms 2004 Film Festival programme)

Jensen was responsible for 2001s widely-distributed Norwegian-male-voice-choir documentary Cool and Crazy – and Arctic Cabaret certainly doesn’t stray far from that turf, either in terms of geography or subject-matter. Cold Singers II, perhaps, or, more accurately, Cold Singers III, as Jensen did actually make a Cool and Crazy sequel in 2002 which didn’t obtain much of a release outside Scandinavia. This is likely to be the fate of Arctic Cabaret, an overlong – but likeable and entertaining – look at one of the main leisure-time activities in Jensens home town of Honningsvag, perhaps the most northerly city in the world.

Trimmed down to an hour or so, Arctic Cabaret would make excellent small-screen fare Jensen could certainly have cut back on the number of songs he includes in full. And some understanding/tolerance of the local sense of humour is a requisite: I can’t help it, we aint got no trees! is a typical punchline. The songs, of course, give voice to many aspects of local culture and politics: Do you think we could fish a bit? There are plenty of fish in the sea, warbles one fisherman, in a very Cool and Crazy moment.

And, leaving aside the rights and wrong of the specific issues (many experts would firmly state that there arent plenty of fish in the sea any more), its encouraging that Jensen does at least offer a podium for his former neighbours to put their points across. In addition, by providing historical context for the Arctic Cabaret phenomenon the Nazis almost entirely razed the entire area at the end of World War II Jensen does ensure his material is of more than strictly parochial interest.

This attempt to widen the films appeal is presumably why the Norwegian title a dialect phrase roughly meaning Head first into the water – has been ditched in favour of the more baldly informative Arctic Cabaret. (Cool and Crazy also had little to do with that films Norwegian title, Heftig og Begeistret meaning something like With gusto and feeling.) But Cabaret isn’t quite the word the sketches we see are much closer to the old English idea of a Revue, and Jensens loose, tangential, episodic style mirrors the Honningsvag format quite closely. Jensens camerawork does include some impressive Steadicam-style shots that swoop over the alluringly North Cape terrain during the pop video style interludes. But anyone in search of a sober, well-made documentary would be advised to look elsewhere.

3rd February, 2004
(seen 14th January : Fokus Cinema, Troms opening ceremony of Troms International Film Festival)

click here for a full list of reviewed films from the Troms International Film Festival 2004

by Neil Young

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