Paradise Road

A film set in Sumatra during the Second World War. Singapore falls. Women and children are evacuated by ship and the ship is bombed. The survivors reach the shore. The Japanese army gathers them and puts them in a camp. The camp is in the jungle. The huts are full, the food is short, malaria is common, and the women line up every morning to be counted. They come from different countries. British, Dutch, Australian and American, and the differences of class continue inside the camp. A teacher brings an idea. There are no instruments and no scores, but they can use their voices. From there the film is a story about a choir. One woman writes out orchestral pieces from memory, another arranges the parts, and the women imitate instruments with their voices. The first concert is given in the middle of the camp. The guards come to stop it and then stand and listen. What the narrative is interested in is not music but endurance: the choir rescues nobody and the film says so plainly; the deaths continue and the years pass. The source is real. A women's vocal orchestra was genuinely formed in the camps; the scores were written from memory and some of them survive. The narrative does not make heroes. Some of the women collaborate, some steal, and the film shows that too. Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Pauline Collins, Jennifer Ehle, Cate Blanchett and Julianna Margulies are in the cast. Bruce Beresford directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes war drama based on real events and large ensembles of women. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope; the film does not decorate the camp and keeps counting the losses.