The major reason I love Spielberg's Empire of the Sun is the orchestral music... and this finale caps everything I love about the film:
Can you feel the bass of the timpani? The exultant melody of the oboe and French horns? The majesty of the trombones? The purity of the voices? This should be the ideal music to be played in churches, but because of post-"Vatican 2", I have to suffer with dirge-like Tagalog drivel like "Hindi Kita Malilimutan" or the Ilonggo mass songs penned by a deaf-mute vagrant from the Plaza that are being sung on off-key notes at the Cathedral.
If you love this kind of music, there's this French film I stumbled upon in one of my Quiapo raids. It's entitled "Le Choristes" or "The Chorus". It's one of those foreign films hailed by the world over which ordinary Filipinos will never see in the local sinehan. It's not even a high brow film but more akin to our own "Mga Munting Tinig."
