Proof that Music is indeed the most beautiful and universal language ...

Rating: 9/10 (12 November 2011)

"The Chorus" has something special that miraculously cuts straight to your heart, whatever it is doesn't belong to our cynical days.
But the 'miraculously' word is less a praise than a simple recognition of value. "Amelie" for instance, is a far superior film in my opinion because at least, it had the merit to be original, something that cruelly lacks in "The Chorus". I almost blame myself for being so familiar with "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Blackboard Jungle", "To Sir With Love" or "Dead Poets Society", the theme of the schoolteacher struggling with rebellious pupils and then helping them to find a meaning to their lives is so old that I wonder how Christophe Barratier got away with this from the French critics' circle. Roger Ebert was less magnanimous in his review.
I reckon Ebert was about to convince me, just before I started to question my criticism. After all, even the most unoriginal plot can make a creative and surprising film. Moreover, Barratier, the director never denied that the film was an adaptation of a forgotten 1945 classic named "A Cage of Nightingales", which basically uses the same plot. Christophe Barratier was so touched by the story that he felt it deserved to be known by the 2000's audience. And thankfully, he didn't kill off the charm by setting the film in a more recent context, and consequently being very careful about the use of this or that minority not to inspire the same kind of negative reactions "Amelie" faced. "The Chorus" is a film set in the France of 1949, a totally different country who was still healing its wounds from WWII.
And in the France of 2004, as it often happens in this country so thirsty of intellectual discussions, the film opened the door to an unexpected wave of nostalgia towards these days where discipline and authority was the daily bread of pupils, whose childhood took its full meaning because it was not spoiled yet by technology. Kids had to learn about respect, yes, but they had the freedom to play with what was at their hands without TV, without the Internet. Tougher times but so much more appealing, and maybe that's why parents and kids both loved the film, and why it became a subject of many social debates highlighting the reality that discipline and authority were still relevant today.
"The Chorus" was a phenomenon, released at a time where the audience was probably tired of having so many French thrillers emulating American films with a certain level of violence and spectacular scenes that didn't fool anyone. It touched a sensitive chord in France, then Europe and even across the Atlantic, because of the universality of its subject. We all had a teacher who inspired us, and the film is a tribute to this optimism that inhabits childhood, this idea that anything is possible, and that it is never too late to find a meaning to your life. Still, the 'miraculously' word is not about the elements I just described, it's something more than that, something transported by a series of unreadable signs translated by the most beautiful and universal human language.
That is the real secret of "The Chorus": the music. It's so magnificently composed and written that it succeeds precisely where others cinematic elements don't. Indeed, the same story with the same actors, director and characters wouldn't have such a great phenomenon without that music. I can't describe how the melody of "Look to your Path" affected me, and the people in the theater. That's the power of the film, as it brilliantly embodies the magical power of Music, this capability to let yourself escape from your condition, and open the windows of your heart to an infinite road made of dreams, projects and inspirations  the film is about hope, optimism, life and this is what the music, hence "The Chorus" is about.
The music works as an antidote to all the cold intellectual approach that would point its finger on the unoriginality of the plot. Yes, we know that Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), the underdog and not pleasant-looking music teacher will succeed, yes, the way the kids turn from average singers to a talented choir, flirts sometimes with cinematic fantasy. Yes, we know what will happen to Pierre Morhange (Jean-Baptiste Maunier). But it's like the film embodies itself the touching naivety of childhood incarnated by the cute little face of Pépineau when he says he doesn't know any song, with his nose cutely moving. Okay, we wise guys, have seen many films like this, but how about the others, how about kids? Should our cinematic knowledge always undermine our appreciation? Should we always blame a film for being manipulative even if it manipulates us to something undeniably positive?
So, I'll give it a 9, not because of the predictability of the plot, but just for some little flaws in the writing that could have been avoided. How couldn't the older Morhange remember the name of the man who changed his life, for the best? Why trying to depict these kids as incarnation of the devils where they are not (after all, Mr. Chips' kids were not all bratty)? Why making such a despicable character out of Rachin, the headmaster, especially after depicting him in a lighter way just before? The movie needed an unlikable bossy civil servant but not an evil man. And last but not least, in the farewell scene, why didn't Mathieu take all the sheets that went sent to him? There are many interrogations left but these ones still bug me whenever I watch "The Chorus".
Still, it's indeed one of the most memorable films of the 2000's, that anyone from any country would love, English, American, French? Forget about it, the movie speaks the most universal language, I mean  it sings it.