The Choral: A Too-Gentle Nod to the Transformative Power of Art

By Liz Braun

Rating: B

The Choral is a beautifully made film with a great cast and impeccable credentials, a collaboration between writer Alan Bennett and director Nicholas Hytner, as were The History Boys and The Lady in the Van. Alas, it’s a bit dull.

The story is set in a Yorkshire mill town in 1916. WWI is in full swing, and a local postman delivers telegrams full of bad news to women whose men are far away fighting… and never coming back.

The village is buzzing with the choral society’s annual production, and the young postman (Oliver Briscombe) and his friend (Taylor Uttley) are told to try out for the choral. They go out of curiosity and stay for the pretty girls.

The choral society is in a bit of a state. Men who would normally be around to sing are off at war, and now even the choir master has enlisted. The head of the choral society is also the mill owner and town big shot (Roger Allam) and he suggests they give one Dr. Guthrie a try as new choir master. Dr. Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) is highly suspect, having just returned to England from many years in Germany.

He is known to admire German composers and artists; furthermore, the village clergyman says darkly, “I prefer a family man,” when Dr. Guthrie’s name is mentioned. Despite all the misgivings, Guthrie becomes the new choir master.

He decides that the choral society will perform Elgar’s oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius — there’s an amusing bit in which Bach, Beethoven, and other German composers are rejected because: war. But Guthrie desperately needs more male voices. In one of the film’s most energetic sequences, he goes out and about in the village, recruiting singers from the pub, from the convalescent hospital, from the bakery.

Woven in and around the progress of the musical production are the fates of some of the town’s young people. A few of the men doing the singing are going to be conscripted. One of the young women (Emily Fairn) waits for news of her boyfriend, missing in action, while another (Amara Okereke) divides her time between the choral and volunteering for the Salvation Army.

There are flirtations. There is singing. The young men wonder how they can go off and fight when they haven’t even had sex yet or tasted champagne.

A badly wounded soldier (Jacob Dudman) returns home and proves to have a perfect singing voice. Dr. Guthrie looks pensive and checks newspaper reports about dead and missing German sailors. The mill owner’s wife mourns their son, killed in action. Simon Russell Beale turns up in a cameo as Sir Edward Elgar. Mark Addy and Alun Armstrong are also in the hefty cast. The transcendent experience of singing with other people is celebrated.

Everything moves toward an electrifying few moments when The Dream of Gerontius is actually performed. Otherwise, it is difficult to be fully invested in the film.

The characters do not feel fully three dimensional and nobody’s fate is particularly moving. The storytelling moves uneasily between drama and comedy. It is all very understated. Understated is usually a good thing. Not so much here.

The Choral. Written by Alan Bennett, directed by Nicholas Hytner. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Taylor Uttley, Mark Addy, and Amara Okereke. In theatres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal January 9 and expanding across Canada January 16.