The Chorus

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Les Choristes
Les Choristes film poster
Directed by	Christophe Barratier
Produced by	Arthur Cohn, Jacques Perrin, Gérard Jugnot etc
Written by	Christophe Barratier, Philippe Lopes-Curval, etc
Starring	Gérard Jugnot, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, François Berléand
Distributed by	Miramax Films (USA)
Release date(s)	March 17, 2004
Running time	96 min
Language	French
Budget	~ €5,500,000
IMDb profile

The Chorus (French: Les Choristes), is a 2004 film directed by Christophe Barratier. The plot is about a passionate music teacher who arrives at a correctional boarding school for boys and transforms their lives through music. The film stars Gérard Jugnot as the teacher, and Jean-Baptiste Maunier as one of his students, a musical prodigy. The movie is based on La Cage aux Rossignols.

The film explores the pain of a child's separation from his parents, and the transcendence of music as the greatest form of expression.

The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; the song "Vois Sur Ton Chemin" (Look at Your Path) was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song.

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The movie begins in the present. Pierre Morhange (Jacques Perrin), an aged, world-famous French conductor who now resides in the US, receives a call from France informing him of his mother's death. Morhange returns to France for the funeral. While at his French home, a middle-aged man appears at his door. Morhange has no idea who the man is, but the stranger eventually reveals himself to be Pépinot (Didier Flamand), one of Morhange's old classmates at the correctional school Fond de L'Etang they attended back in 1949. Pépinot shows Morhange the journal of Clément Mathieu, their supervisor and unofficial choir conductor. Morhange proceeds to read the rest of the journal, and the real story begins.

It's 1949, and Clement Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) has taken the position of supervisor (surveillant in the French version) at the Fond De L'Étang (literally, Bottom of the Pond) school for troubled boys. Middle-aged and resigned to giving up his dream of composing music, Mathieu is still cautiously optimistic, despite the alarming attitude of his predecessor as supervisor, who doesn't bother hiding how glad he is to leave. Mathieu's predecessor, however, is kind enough to warn him of the more dangerous students at the school.

They include young Pierre Morhange (Jean-Baptiste Maunier), the boy with the angelic face but devilish temperament and Le Querrec (Cyril Bernicot), whose prankster booby trap severely injured the school's elderly custodian, Maxence. Not all of the kids are malevolent, an example being the small, adorable orphan Pepinot (Maxence Perrin), but that matters not with the school's strict and unsympathetic headmaster Rachin (Francis Berleand) who has imposed the motto "Action Equals Reaction" upon the school. He and another adult, Chabert (Kad Merad), liberally administer corporal punishment and periods of confinement which proves ineffective as their wards continue to misbehave.

After several failed attempts to discipline his students, Mathieu decides to try and get through to them with music. He turns his class into a choir and composes songs for them. He soon manages to capture his students' interest. Just as things are starting to look up for the children, they are joined by two more classmates. Pierre Morhange, who had been in detention when Matthieu started teaching, and Mondain, a special case from the local mental instutite. Though not officially crazy, he is a borderline case with an extremely violent and anti-social attitude. The caretaker at the institute tells Rachin that he wants to study how Mondain adjusts to a less strictly controlled environment, but neglects to mention that the boy murdered one of his supervisors at the institute.

Both of the new children become trouble in Mathieu's class. Mondain's unabashed refusal to obey Mathieu's orders prompts the other children to follow suit, slipping back into the mode of wilful disobedience and quasi-criminality they inhabited before the choir was started. Morhange refuses to participate in the choir, his hostility toward Mathieu being fuelled by the fact that the new supervisor has developed romantic feelings for Morhange's beautiful single mother, Violette. However, the boy's stupendous voice and incredible musical gifts, which enable him to quickly become the Choir's soloist, are themselves a subject of discussion between his mother and Mathieu, who is convincing her to think of a career as a musician for her son.

When more than 200,000 Francs are stolen from Rachin, Mondain is accused at once and arrested by the police. Maxence eventually finds the money along with a pupil's harmonica, so that this pupil is revealed as the real thief. However, Rachin, who is not told about the thief's identity, refuses to accept Mondain again.

A little while later, Rachin sets out for Lyon to receive a medal. But the ceremony is interrupted as terrible news arrive from Fond de l'Étang telling him that the school building was burning. Fortunately, the students had gone out with Maxence and Mathieu into the forest. Rachin is still angry with Maxence and Mathieu because they neglected their responsibility by leaving the school unattended. Despite all this, everything turns out well in the end, even though Rachin ends up firing Mathieu. The film closes with a scene which shows Mathieu bringing along Pépinot after two heartfelt pleas from his little pupil.

Epilogue Rachin eventually was soon forced to resign from all the other teachers of the school. Pierre and his mother soon leave her fiance after he tries to send Pierre to another boarding school. Mathieu taught music until the end of his days.