The Chorus (Les Choristes)
Anyone who’s seen Lean on Me, Dead Poets Society or Mr Holland’s Opus will know the story. A class of unruly/disillusioned/neglected kids are introduced to a teacher whose influence will forever change their lives. This will require a new approach and some radical ideas, which will inevitably irritate the stuffier establishment until behaviour improves, results go up and the kids have a new zeal for learning and life.
This time the teacher’s name is Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), a middle aged bachelor and failed musician who has come to work at the Fond de l’Etang boarding school. Roughly translated “bottom of the pond”, the name says it all. The boys are considered as pond scum - too unruly for ordinary schools, unwanted and unloved. The camera adores the fair-headed Pierre (Jean-Baptiste Maunier), a troublemaker with the voice of an angel. Mathieu is also new to the school, and when he hears the boys singing his eyes light up. He decides to start a choir, which will give the boys a focus and keep them out of trouble.
Naturally the school’s draconian headmaster, Rachin (François Berléand), disapproves of Mathieu’s methods, and hates the idea of the little brats having fun. He shuts the choir down, but it carries on regardless, with Mathieu organising rehearsals in secret.
Engineered for maximum emotional impact, we shouldn’t wonder that The Chorus received so much international acclaim when it was released in 2004. Apart from the fact that everyone speaks French, the film could have come straight out of Hollywood. The storyline is highly conventional and the characters crudely sketched. The sadistic Rachin appears incapable of compassion and has no regard for justice. As he flogs yet another boy until he bleeds, you wonder why this man went into education in the first place. He freely admits that he hates his job, so why doesn’t he quit?
Neither is the boys’ transformation particularly credibly, musically or behaviourally. Initially out of beat and out of tune, the boys reach the standard of… well, the standard of Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc, the professional boys’ choir that did the actual singing. After he is packed off to music college, little Pierre doesn’t just turn into a good conductor - he becomes the Best Conductor in the World.
The Chorus is a mediocre example of its genre. There’s nothing wrong with using a tried and tested formula. However, given that the story is well known to the film’s audience, director Christophe Barratier and screenwriter Philippe Lopes-Curval should have added something new or unexpected. They do not. Characters are starkly painted but barely explored. There are no real surprises, and we gain little insight into the reasons behind the boys’ bad behaviour, why Mathieu accepted a job at such an awful school, or what motivates him to keep fighting against his pompous superiors.
