E-Mail This Article to a Friend SCREAMING MEN

We’ve all felt a bit like the guys in the opening scene of Mika Ronkainen’s documentary. Tiny specks in dark suits and rubber ties, marching single file across the polar ice to a chosen spot in order to scream into the void. That’s one of the many striking images in this whimsical (Ronkainen might be a little too beholden to Aki Kaurismäki for his own good) account of Finland’s Screaming Male Choir, a group of idle maniacs who have organized into a disciplined, world-touring outfit screaming out their orchestrated renditions of favorites ranging from national anthems to obscure passages from international treaties. Their founder and leader is craggy Petri Sirviö, a musician and family man from Oulu who decided to put his absurdist spirit and everyday frustrations to good use by enlisting like-minded fellows in his project. How to join? Blow into a device measuring lung capacity and explain your reasons for wanting to be a member. ("I’m not doing anything else," says one applicant. He was accepted.)

In concert they’re like a cross between chanting Buddhist monks and an insane asylum as they bellow out their selections, which sometimes get them in trouble with the officious locals encountered in their travels. Refused permission to scream La Marseillaise in Paris, they ponder announcing La Marseillaise as their next number and screaming out Deutschland über Alles instead. Subversive but never serious, Screaming Men is the next best thing to screaming yourself. In English and Finnish with English subtitles. (76 minutes)