The Chorus (Les Choristes)

2005 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and Original Song, I saw this movie in Chicago at a special preview, in 2004. The Writer/Director Christophe Barratier was on hand to do a little Q&A session. The audience was of a mixed age group with twenty-somethings on the low end up through seniors. I got the tickets through a professional organization for piano teachers that my wife belongs to, which makes me think they were targeting people with musical associations in order to create some buzz about the movie prior to its official release. The audience reaction young and old was very positive. I conclude this based on the reactions to the live audience during the movie as well as their comments afterwards.

This is a simple story of Clement Matthieu, (Gerard Jugnot) a teacher who goes to work at a school for more-or-less delinquent (anti-social) boys and basically wins them over through music -- a kind of music sooths the savage beast story. My primary complaint is that there is nothing new about this film. If you’ve seen Bing Crosby croon his way through “Swinging on a Star” in “Going My Way” you’ve pretty much seen the best of this movie. In addition the teacher has an unpublished musical masterwork under his sleeve, actually hidden in his valise. Hmm a hint of “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” combined with an homage to “Goodbye Mr. Chips (pick your favorite version), with possibly a touch of “Annie” and you begin to see the idea.

In short a kindly musical genius brings love, understanding, and civility to a rag-tag group of young heathens (think “Lord of the Flies”) who are all terrorized by the evil headmaster and in the end find that life sucks but eventually you graduate and go somewhere else. The primary focus of the movie is on Mssr. Matthieu’s young student Pierre Morhange played nicely by Jean-Baptiste Maunier who had no previous acting credit and whose favorable features have reportedly made him something of a poster boy for preteen French girls. The teacher finds (very predictably) that Pierre is a great talent however he must first unload a lot of personal baggage. In the meantime Mssr. Mattieu becomes smitten by Pierre’s Mom adding a plot twist about a surprising as a railroad signal being followed by a freight train. The story is a reminiscence instigated by the return of the now musically successful adult Pierre to his hometown which to me is suspiciously familiar to “Cinema Paradiso.”

Writer/Director Christophe Barratier told us in the Q& A that this film had some autobiographical influence but, mostly by way of the fact that he was once a boy who had gone to a boarding school and had sung as boy soprano in the choir. His parents are both professionally involved in film in France, which he admitted gave him entry into the profession. In the interview I attended he told us that the primary purpose of this movie was to demonstrate to the industry that he knows how to tell a story on film, that he has the expertise to handle a budget and control a production and in short that he is a capable director. All of which appears to be true. The overall production is more than competent in my opinion. There is a variety of camera techniques and lighting techniques that give a nice feel to the visual aspect and showcase his talents. I think the overwhelming success of this film was as much a surprise to him as to it was to everyone else.

Les Choristes became a huge hit in France where it was filmed and in fact outsold Harry Potter in 2004. I’m not quite sure why except that the French probably prefer stories about French boys over stories about English boys. The dialogue is in French with subtitles.

Basically I am a huge sucker for sappy sentimental films and as such I did enjoy this movie. Also I too did some singing as a boy, so the music did resonate for me as well. In short I liked the film quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone who might enjoy this genre. My biggest complaint from a cinematic point-of-view is that this film breaks no new ground nor offers us anything new in the way of story or plot. However this does not make it bad and in fact the Europeans generally seem more comfortable then American film makers with making simple films apparently for the sake of the experience with no need for a big finish or particularly compelling story. I guess that’s what we have TV for. I give this movie two eyeballs on my three eyeball scale because though it is predictable it is well executed.


Recommended: Yes