..the story
Fleeing from Singapore, the women's ship is attacked and sunk by Japanese fighter planes.The women prisoners, facing extreme cruelty and hardship, seek any means for survival. Adrienne Partier (Glenn Close) hits on the idea of forming a choir in a discussion with Margaret Drummond (Pauline Collins). They are both trained musicians, and Margaret has many scores of orchestrations memorized.
She writes them down in children's notebooks, and dozens of women, risking constant danger of extreme punishment or even execution, conspire to practice surreptitiously. No glee club, this, but a vocal orchestra, whose first performance is the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony.
Some of the joy in this film is this "Sound of Music" moment, when Close raises her hands and the vocal orchestra transforms the dense tropical air with sweet, haunting strains. The savage beast calmed, the guards, who came to break up the illegal gathering, sit and listen with awe.
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