By:
Yee Wen Shuen (Sr1C)
If you regarded High School Musical series must watch, then this movie should send you into unstoppable tears and delight. The French Club had managed to invite a TV producer for their club’s Movie Workshop, after school on 24 July 2019. It was rare to be able to get to see a good old, classic French movie that was revolving around music.
The movie itself had great acting, and it was produced for quite some time, but it was refreshing to those who have not encountered the French society in the past. The storyline starts with a middle-aged man that had applied to be a
prefect teacher in a school for troubled boys, and many things have changed ever since. Protagonists include the prefect, a boy with tremendous musical talent and special vocal chords, and an underdeveloped boy who’s eternally
waiting for his father that will never return, always keeps on standing by the large, rusted gates every Saturday because of an empty promise.
As the story escalates, we see the prefect establishes a school choir despite the students’ odd quirks and one of the main antagonist’s denials, the school’s headmaster. Time flies, and the Countess of France arrives to visit the school choir, only for the credit to be stolen by the headmaster himself. But no matter, the school was burned down by the second antagonist, which the students and the prefect miraculously dodged a bullet by going on an unpermitted hike in the woods.
The prefect was soon fired due to the accident, with all the blame put on him, labelled as “neglect of care,” and “irresponsible.” His students bid him farewell through their voices and songs, sending paper airplanes to him from their classroom, all writing “Goodbye, Chrome Dome,” which was their nickname for their beloved teacher. The underdeveloped boy begs the prefect to take him away, and after some struggling, he does, ending the flashback with “He was right. His father did come for him on a Saturday.” He had adopted the young child as his own, raising him in the arts of music.
The TV developer expresses that school was indeed a fixated structure, but it was to create a base for students to develop their own talents individually. With the unconscious training on stimulating immunity to stress, students were able to fare better in the outside world. Everyone can harm and everyone can hurt you, but it’s your own mindset that matters. “Nothing can destroy iron, but its own rust can,” was the quote best described with his inspirational speech.
