Estonian independence, up close

The film gives one view of the nonviolent revolution in Estonia that led to independence in 1991.

The small Baltic nation of Estonia has been conquered over the course of its 2,000-year history by the Vikings, the Teutonic knights, the Danes, the Swedes, the Lithuanians, the Poles, the Russians, the Germans, the Soviets, the Nazis, and after Hitler's defeat in 1945, by the Soviets again.

The documentary "The Singing Revolution" tells the story of how the long-suffering Estonians finally achieved their independence in 1991 after a nonviolent revolution fueled by the country's tradition of mass singing. Every five years since 1869, hundreds of thousands of Estonians have gathered at the Tallinn Song Festival to sing folk songs and renew their sense of community; in the 1980s, Estonian politicians used this festival and the country's folk-singing tradition to win liberation from the crumbling Soviet Union.

Entertaining and well-constructed, "The Singing Revolution" is nevertheless too one-sided to claim documentary status. The filmmakers interview Estonian activists, politicians, academics, and journalists, but give hardly any time to the Russians who, under Stalin's "Russification" program, came to constitute about 40 percent of the population - a population significantly less enthusiastic than native Estonians about the independence movement. The objectivity of any film funded by the Estonian Ministry of Culture and the Estonian Film Foundation is questionable. Compounding that question is the filmmakers' uncritical cheerleading for the brave, honest Estonians against the cruel, corrupt Communists. No revolution, not even a peaceful revolution, is that simple. "The Singing Revolution" may not be propaganda, but it's made in propaganda style, with its heroes and villains both comically overdrawn and the conflict simplistically portrayed.

"This is the story of how culture saved a nation," intones the film's narrator, but the Estonian culture of singing was obviously only one reason why the revolution succeeded. No number of patriotic songs could stop Stalin from conquering the country in 1940, after signing his infamous nonaggression pact with Hitler, and no song prevented the Nazis from doing the same when Hitler decided to break the pact and invade Russia in 1941.

As the filmmakers are forced to admit, it was only when Mikhail Gorbachev instituted glasnost that Estonian nationalists began to openly protest the occupation. Their success had as much to do with the weakness of the Soviet empire as with the strength of the independence movement. Singing may make a catchy movie title, but it rarely makes a revolution.