a-ha: The Movie review – Take on Me hitmakers relive the highs and the lows | Film
It’s acquired to be one of many worst jobs in showbiz: being a-ha’s official photographer. Right here’s the poor man after a very awkward, everyone-gritting-their-teeth photograph shoot: “It’s very exhausting as a photographer when folks don’t need to be collectively. It exhibits.” And it actually does present. Watching this Fortieth-anniversary documentary, you may conclude that what a-ha really want is a band therapist, not a photographer.
4 years within the making, a-ha: The Film is the great story of the Norwegian trio (about 20 minutes too complete for all however diehard followers). To anybody over 45, no introductions are mandatory: a-ha is the band whose single Tackle Me reached No 2 within the UK charts again in 1985 (it’s nonetheless a knockout pop tune with the crack-cocaine of riffs). Again then, the band’s singer Morten Harket smouldered like a delicate misunderstood dangerous boy. Now he seems just like the dishy physician from a daytime cleaning soap, nonetheless impossibly chiselled. Like all of the band, Harket has acquired his private demons: he’s a perfectionist who immediately reaches for the hand sanitiser after assembly followers (this was filmed pre-Covid, apparently). Keyboardist Magne Furuholmen nonetheless resents being booted off guitar again within the 80s. Guitarist Pål Waaktaar-Savoy is a controlling presence.
The historical past that emerges right here is of a band yo-yoing between makes an attempt to be taken severely as artists, then coming again for extra boyband fame and adulation. An air of collective self-loathing and remorse hangs over them. After all, it’s not possible to really feel that sorry for 3 rich males in center age swanning world wide on sold-out excursions carrying leather-based jackets that price the value of a second-hand automotive. Waaktaar-Savoy’s spouse places it finest when she says it’s a disgrace they’ll’t get pleasure from it extra. “It’s sinful to not respect what you will have when you will have a lot.”
