If you can imagine sitting in an auditorium and listening to an endless conference made up of pathos-filled speeches about a theme you are not an expert in - this film offers plenty of that!
Why not spend a couple of hours looking at some fake-bearded men in offices and bars, discussing "important" stuff, while an extradiegetic narrator fills in on the broader context, desperately trying to convince the audience, that it is our duty to have feelings for it all? Sure, beside the city gentlemen, this film also contains scenes from the countryside (from the land that sings) and a whole new set of different characters that comes with it. However, over the course of the film, they all too turn out to remain insignificant.
The supposed historical drama that is this movie by informed spectator might somehow be grasped intellectually, but by no means emotionally, although its makers saturate the arid plot with a rather pervasive musical score to directly emotionalize most of the scenes.
And so, the only reason one might endure the 150 minutes of this film, is the periodical switching between the two principal action settings, each time renewing for a split second the desperate hope that the story might finally take off. Regretfully, that never happens.
This flick is a failure, hiding behind the pretext of serving an important purpose of educating its goers, while in reality it's far from being able to spark even the slightest curiosity about the Latvian singing tradition, although the theme in and of itself is a very significant one, offering plenty of opportunity for development of great cinematic storylines. Maybe next time and by real filmmakers.
