The concert film documents the ecstasies of performance; the biopic narrativizes its painstaking preparations. In between these two modes stands the rehearsal film, capturing the sensitivities of perspectives and personalities amid its crafting of the larger, all-encompassing purpose to which these individuals are devoted. True to form, Jac Min’s Coda outlines — broadly — its purpose and justification: the Victoria Chorale, one of Singapore’s premier choirs, prepares to compete abroad for the first time in 18 years, except that its conductor is aging and its choristers are not getting any younger either. But the film also bears witness to the lived experience, not just of the alumni choir and its many challenges and tribulations, but also of singing per se, as ritual, performance, and shared meaning. Beneath the sweeping portrait of a community lies an intimate snapshot of its dreams and anxieties.
For the most part, Coda spotlights the Chorale’s conductor and master, Nelson Kwei, whose rehearsals in the lead up to their participation at the 2024 Tokyo International Choir Competition take on an immersive yet nostalgic quality. Kwei, having led Victoria Chorale since the 1980s as it admitted singers from both Victoria School and its affiliate junior college, proves a steadily unremarkable presence at times, declining to lord over every note and decision produced by his students. The choir, on the other hand, reflects a quintessentially professional sensibility despite being firmly non-professional — a nuance possibly lost outside of Singapore. Sopranos and tenors of varying ages and life stages converge on their scores without fanfare or fuzz; the alto and bass sections similarly come together as one in a months-long marathon of honing and polishing their voices. There is talk of the overseas championships and accolades as mere validation reflective of the country’s “product-oriented” approach even to artistic pursuit. Whither the stars that shine bright?
Whether this is a fault or feature of Min’s patient but sometimes polished survey is hard to tell, for Coda never quite commits to either formalist observation or rabid sensationalism. Instead, a communal time capsule emerges, harboring the sounds of grandeur and great beauty as the director effectively presents the Chorale’s full repertoire onscreen: a calculated eclecticism of devotion (Palestrina’s “Sicut cervus”), English tradition (the popular hymn “At the River”), untrammeled Romanticism (two of William Blake’s poems adapted for song), exotic folk ritual (“Bin-Nam-Ma” by Alberto Grau), and more. Coda’s throughline remains conventionally grounded in the high stakes of Tokyo, as tension, stress, exuberance, struggle, and anticipation alternate between its rehearsals and sound checks. But it is no less evocative for that; as Kwei and his collaborators dissect Blake’s “The Angel” and delineate its persona, that of a “middle-aged housewife with a butter knife,” the film comes alive as a testament to the dynamic poetry latent in acts of craftsmanship. Like the haikus bookending its many chapters, the film thrives in its little spaces and frissons, its inevitable conclusion more a casting call than a permanent farewell. As its maxim states: the “triumph fades,” until the next round of victory, but the “memories stay.”
Published as part of Singapore International Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 2.
Comments are closed.