YOUNG@HEART [PG]

The first scene in director Stephen Walker’s documentary Young@Heart is of 92-year-old Eileen Hall belting out a rendition of punk pioneers The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” before an enraptured audience.

Hall is regal, with a face deeply lined and snow-white hair; as she opens wide to let the words loose, her tongue is visible, and it, too, is wrinkled. It’s a delectable image, and the perfect capsule summary for a movie about a chorus made up of senior citizens who tackle all sorts of musical genres; not just the big band stuff of the 1940s, or classical compositions, as you might imagine, but the hottest new acts like Coldplay, along with some that have attained modern classic status like The Police and The Talking Heads.

Their idea of vintage music is James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” and you can tell that despite oxygen tanks and bouts of major surgery, arthritis, and the loss of friends, these singers are feeling good, too.

Chalk it up to the bold imagination of chorus director Bob Cilman, who started the band on a lark in 1982. Back then, the band sang old vaudeville music; when Cilman had the stroke of brilliance to throw them some more modern fare, the chorus took and ran with, audiences responded, and new artistic ground was broken.

Witness the film’s witty music videos: The Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated” unfolds at a nursing home, setting the youthfully plaintive lyrics against the too-authentic straits of more mature people who might end up sedated whether or not it’s by choice in an uproarious reversal; The Talking Heads’ “Road To Nowhere” shows the gang on a tour bus, at a dusty crossroads, and kicking back in a corn field… oh yes, and at a tattoo parlor. For The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” the filming takes place at centers of vitality: a bowling alley and a bar.

The chorus members don’t always have an easy time of it, mind you: The 71 repetitions of the word “can” in The Pointer Sisters’ funk classic “Yes, We Can, Can” prove worrisome; duets seem next to impossible to coordinate (sadly, one duet becomes a solo when a chorus member dies suddenly); and when it comes to Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia,” the chorus hates it… but they soldier on all the same, despite Cilman’s sometimes harsh feedback. A concert looms in a few weeks, and somehow all of this must gel and make sense; asked, “Where are you?” one chorus member sighs, “We’re in Hell.”

But they’re having a good time of it despite the hard work, or perhaps because of the hard work: “It was fun,” reckons one returning member, solicited specifically for a turn on the tune “Fix You.” “I didn’t run out of air!”

Reckons another, “You forget about the creaky bones.”

You also forget all about age and frailty and mortality… almost. When one member’s death is followed by another in less than a week, there’s no simple tuneful forgetfulness, but there is a show to put on and the chorus rallies to put on an emotionally resonant concert. Not note perfect, no, but charged with the voices of experience.••• –Kilian Melloy

Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.