It's 1942 Singapore. Adrienne Pargiter (Glenn Close) joins the women and children evacuating from the approaching Japanese only to have their ship sunk. She and others swim ashore to Sumatra and imprisoned in an internment camp. As they face mounting brutal treatment, they decide to organize a choir.There are a lot of great actresses here; Frances McDormand, Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, Julianna Margulies plus many many others. The different characters can get to be too numerous. However the main characters played by the better known actresses remain center stage. Ten years before, the stories would be shocking and ground breaking. After Schindler's List, that kind of inhumanity is no longer as shocking and it seemed that this movie held back the most shocking visuals. For example, when the woman gets burnt alive, we are barely allowed to see anything. The beatings were all stage crafted. They could have stage a more brutal vision.

Interesting but uneven tale of a variety of women captured by the British while fleeing Singapore during World War 11. They are taken to Sumatra and literally brutalized for the duration of th war.Glenn Close leads an impressive cast.The film becomes uneven when we see outrageous Japanese brutality followed by a scene of toleration as the women perform. Certainly, these barbaric Japanese lacked any form of compassion. By the next scene, the brutality is in full force. The lame excuse given by the commander of their internment camp at the end of the war is certainly nothing with nothing.It was interesting to see that a few of the women became prostitutes in a brothel for food and to escape the brutality.Their forming of a choir was certainly their attempt at Singing for Time. (Remember the television holocaust film-Playing for Time?)

Decent acting and decent story equals decent movie. The movie is about some women who have to survive in a Japanese war camp and find salvation when they create a choir. It is a heartwarming and true story that rocked me to the core. The acting was superb. Cate Blanchett was great in what must have been one of her earlier roles. Pauline Collins was great in a role that constantly reminded me of Shirley Valentine and Glenn Close was also very good as the leader of the choir. Frances McDormand was also very good. My only problem is that Glenn Close has been in so many American movies and shows I kept being reminded of them every time she spoke an impeccable English accent. She pulls it off but I would have chosen someone actually English. Overall a very good movie.

This movie is one of the very few made about female POWs of the Japanese in the Second World War. I feel that this subject has been hugely neglected by war historians in general and is a story that deserved to be told. Here there is no machismo, just the story of women enduring in the face of intolerable suffering and brutality. The acting is absolutely flawless and unlike some critics I do not think the story drags at some points. The wonderful opening sequence accompanied by the Elgar Concerto is riveting and exciting, and although some parts of this film are historically inaccurate, this pales into nothing compared to the wonderful sense of time, place and adversity.