Christophe Barratier is in Chicago to talk about his first feature film, Les Choristes. Lingering to answer questions after a screening in another city, he missed his flight, arriving in town in the wee hours. In spite of the lost sleep, he is eager to talk about the film.

SC: One thing that enticed me to see the film was that you produced Microcosmos, Winged Migration and Himalaya, three intensely visual films. Les Choristes struck me as having some of those qualities, like a silent film. Do you agree?

CB: No, in fact, I’ve never seen that point of view. (Smiles) Well, maybe, but those films have little dialog, or just a voice over, in this film the relationship to the music is so important. Why I consider that this movie is such a success in France is that everyone sees different things that they like. Some people like the music, other people like the lead character, Clement Mathieu, with others it’s the kids.

SC: For me, one of those things is the elegant visual style, and it’s beautiful musical voice. How did you approach the score to drive the story?

CB: All of the songs were selected carefully. I had to make several songs in different styles. I wrote some of the songs myself. Also, I was able to correct things – to make it longer, to make it shorter, and to select the right song. I saw the whole thing like poetry. It was a low budget movie so I did not have things like a musical advisor, or a lyricist or a composer. There was not the budget for those things so I said okay, it’s my responsibility, and I did all those things myself. Really, it was a good thing, because I thought of it as my baby and I worked very hard.

SC: It moves from the elite world of the symphony conductor to another extreme, a boy’s reformatory. Do you have some familiarity with both of those worlds?

CB: Yes, because I was raised in a school in the poor suburbs of Paris. My parents were divorced when I was very young. I was raised for a long while by my grandmother. I was making music from about the age of 7 and I had a teacher who was not a great musician but who was a wonderful teacher. He helped me get into a very fine music school, the Paris Conservatory, and when I went back to live with my mother, I went there to study.

SC: So, were you a boy like the character of Morhange in the movie?

CB: No, more like the character of Pépinot because although my mother came to visit me once a week, my father never came to the school. I was expecting him each time, but I never met father at the gate on Saturdays. My father was not a very good father then, and like in the film, I used to wait for him, but he never came.

SC: So, the movie is very personal for you. Was it also based on a film called "A Cage of Nightingales?"

CB: I got the basic plot from that story. It was a story that took place in a boarding school, about a director who tried to organize a choir. Apart from that plot, the two movies are really very different. Les Choristes is not a re-make, but it is inspired by it.

SC: How do you like directing?

CB: I loved directing. It’s the first time in my life where I felt that I was really in a good place. I was happy with everything. You have a lot of difficulties, you have lots of questions, and you have to answer everything. I was so involved and really happy from a to z. I think I have really found my way, really, at 40 years old. Sometimes you say that the best way from one point to another is a direct line, and now I feel the direct line is complete.

SC: It’s been very successful in France and I think it will be a crowd-pleaser in the United States. Do you think that the movie is sentimentalized at all?

CB: No, I don’t think so. Of course, it is sentimental, because by nature I am sentimental, but if you look carefully at the movie, there is the boy in the prison and other sadness. Of course, people are touched by things that happen, when the director becomes angry, when the choir sings and other things, but there is also laughter. If there had been only sadness, that would have been too sentimentalized but it is not like an old, how do you say, crying movie?

SC: A tear-jerker?

CB: Yes, that makes people just cry, no, it is not sentimentalized like that.

SC: The casting of Gerard as Mathieu is excellent. He evoked sort of a Chaplinesque character, again conjuring up silent film.

CB: I am very pleased that you mention that because speaking about my own movie, I would not like to make reference to Charlie Chaplin, but I wrote Clément Mathieu thinking of him. He is one who is a little weak, who is not very well dressed, who has not had much success, but who is so full of life, who will always find a solution for the others. He will always be sacrificing for the others while trying to comply with the authorities, a bit naïve, but trying to find ways to manage.

SC: Like how he made the boy who was tone deaf into a music stand?

CB: Yes, yes, like Charlie would.