The Choral Review
The Choral, the latest collaboration between Sir Nicholas Hytner (The Lady in the Van) and Alan Bennett (The History Boys), tells the story of a small Yorkshire choir looking to find normalcy in the First World War through engagement in community and singing. It stars Ralph Fiennes as Dr Henry Guthrie, a stoic and stern conductor who gets appointed choirmaster after the previous choir master gets called up, alongside the likes of Roger Allam, Mark Addy, and Alun Armstrong, who form part of a wider ensemble cast. It is a charming, well-made snapshot into life at the time, although it often feels a little jumbled and thin narratively, with the large cast limiting the amount of connections that the audience can really get with the characters.
The heart of The Choral comes from watching a group of people from different backgrounds come together to put on a piece of art that traditionally they wouldn’t have gotten to collaborate on, and that creates some really nice moments. At the start of the film, the choral society has lost a lot of men to the front line, so the committee (Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Ron Cook) decides they need to break traditions and open up the group to new people for auditions to keep it going. This allows us to meet a variety of delightful characters, including the likes of Mary (Amara Okereke), a devout Salvation Army volunteer, Mitch (Shaun Thomas), who is immediately smitten by Mary; sex worker Mrs. Bishop (Lyndsay Marshal), and Bella (Emily Fairn), a woman awaiting the return of MIA boyfriend Clyde (Jacob Dudman).
We also see best friends Ellis (Taylor Uttley) and Lofty (Oliver Briscombe), who are too young to be conscripted at the start of the film but eventually get the call-up. The whole cast delivers strong performances throughout; however, it does feel like there are perhaps too many characters at various points. The script does a lot to try and create deeper moments for each character, but I couldn’t help but feel that they could have reduced the ensemble down by a couple of characters, and the whole film would have flowed a little easier, as well as feeling more thorough in its connections with the audience.
There are a lot of different themes being looked at over the course of this two-hour film, from class to sex work and from queerness to war. All of them are covered carefully and gracefully, but similarly to the surface-level connections created for the characters, I couldn’t help but feel that if Bennett and Hytner had picked two or three in particular, then we could have felt more emotion in their messaging throughout. With a lot of relationships and dynamics in play, some of the subplots work a lot better than the others. I thought in particular, the conversation with Clyde and Bella on the hill felt a bit out of place tonally with the rest of the film, and that it would have given the film a bit of a helping hand more if it weren’t included.
The Choral concludes with a particularly lovely sequence, where the choir finally gets to perform “The Dream of Gerontius”, and visually, it’s a fitting ending to the film. I was hoping that the final moments would justify the multiple jumbled storylines throughout, but it doesn’t quite work out that way. However, it remains an enjoyable film with numerous pleasant moments and strong character performances that carry it through. A lot of the previous successful works between Bennett/Hytner came from the theatre first, and my closing thoughts were that I couldn’t help but feel that maybe this would have worked better on stage.
★★★
In cinemas on November 7th / Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Ron Cook, Amara Okereke, Lyndsay Marshal, Emily Fairn / Dir: Nicholas Hynter / Sony Pictures UK / 12A
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