DUBAI: “We’re stronger together.” Those are the words that appear on the screen at the end of “Military Wives,” the latest film from Oscar-nominated director Peter Cattaneo. The movie, made before the COVID-19 pandemic began, was not tailored to this crisis, but as it debuts as a digital release instead of its originally intended theatrical un, it may be the first major film of the current era to capture its spirit.
“It’s the perfect lockdown film,” Cattaneo tells Arab News. “I think it's quite a good antidote to all this isolation, as it’s about being together, and what represents togetherness more than a choir? I'm hoping people can feel like they've gone out and bonded with each other just by watching.”
Inspired by true events, the film tells the story of a group of women who live together on a military base in the UK while their husbands serve in Afghanistan. Struggling to keep up their spirits, they band together to form a singing group, reimagining classic pop songs and using music to support one another even as hardship and tragedy strikes.
“Military Wives” is the latest film from Oscar-nominated director Peter Cattaneo. (Supplied)
Finding joy in life even in the face of tremendous personal adversity has been a constant theme in Cattaneo’s work, most famously in his 1997 classic “The Full Monty,” for which he was nominated for Best Director at the Oscars. While watching a BBC documentary about the dozens of real military wives’ choirs, Cattaneo was struck by the poignancy of their story, and reached out to the real women to learn more about their individual journeys and how singing helped them through even the most difficult times.
“You could see the cathartic nature of what the singing was doing for them. There's this really moving side to talking to people in choirs about the kind of physiological and mental health benefits of singing, from the camaraderie to the breathing and what it does for their endorphins, and how all this came together,” says Cattaneo.
To lead the film, Cattaneo enlisted Oscar-nominee Kristin Scott Thomas (“The English Patient,” “Mission: Impossible”) and Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe,” “Game Night”), who quickly bonded with both each other and the entire ensemble cast.
The movie was made before the COVID-19 pandemic began. (Supplied)
“We were all really nervous,” says Horgan. “None of us are singers, so you feel a little bit vulnerable, but it’s like the story that’s behind it, you’re better together. When we would sing on our own that would be horrific but when we got together as a choir, it was wonderful. The reason the film works is because it was such a lovely bunch of women.”
Both the cast and crew would often get emotional during filming, especially during the singing scenes, according to Cattaneo.
“It was so moving. I don't know why. There's something about the honesty of it, people are just letting go, you know, in front of each other,” the director says. “And of course, every song has a whole load of residual memories and just a chord change can just somehow get you. It's kind of amazing and forever fascinating.”
To preserve emotional realism, Cattaneo forbade the cast from rehearsing before filming the singing scenes, wanting to capture the awkwardness of singing together for the first time. The cast, however, had other plans, often practicing ahead of time to avoid embarrassment.
“I kept trying to stop them rehearsing all the time, but they would sing secretly. I wanted them to sing things like the Human League song for the first time ever on camera. They said, ‘We’re actors! We can pretend to be bad!’ They didn’t want to be humiliated. I kept hearing little sneaky groups of three or four of them practicing or having the lyrics on their phones,” Cattaneo says. “The joy of those songs is that you think you know the lyrics, but you don’t, you know the first two lines then you get lost, and I wanted to get that on camera. After a few takes I said, ok you’re getting too good, so try and turn it down, and then it would sound comedy bad.”
Cattaneo chose classic Eighties pop songs including “Only You” by Yazoo and “Time after Time” by Cyndi Lauper, as well as enlisting Robbie Williams and Gareth Malone to write an original song performed by the choir at the end of the film. Though there was an emotional specificity to the wives’ struggle to live life normally without their husbands, finding songs to fit that thematically was surprisingly easy for Cattaneo.
“After all, a good pop song is often a little cry out to someone else who can't quite hear you,” he says.
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