There are simple Sunday afternoon pleasures to be had in the gentle comedy drama The Choral, the latest collaboration for Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett. Their last was 2015’s The Lady in the Van, a slight, mostly unmemorable film blessed by a spiky Maggie Smith performance but cursed with an uneven tone. Unlike that, and their previous two works together on screen, this wasn’t based on a play but it often feels like it and, at too many points, that it also maybe should have been one instead. There are moments of creaky comedy and some bluntly emotional dialogue that one can more easily picture in front of a specifically catered-to live audience.
On a big screen, The Choral is a little out of place, its only moments of pure cinema courtesy of the spectacular Yorkshire scenery. Well, that and those when star Ralph Fiennes fully takes command, an actor who adds not just weight and class but also one who gives a more studied and delicate performance than many of those around him. The star is having a bit of a moment after both Conclave and 28 Years Later and while this project is in a far lower register, and far less likely to be meme-friendly, it’s further proof of his remarkable flexibility. He plays Dr Guthrie, a choir master hired by desperate locals in 1916, a time of loss and confusion, with many already dead or missing and many others waiting to be conscripted. It’s meddled with the social order and allowed for some to find space they might not have otherwise occupied, shown in the new makeup of the choir, which Guthrie must craft and control.
He’s a divisive choice, an expert in his field but one whose reputation has slowly been sinking since the war. His many years spent in Germany (they simply respect the arts in a way that the Brits do not, he insists) and his “peculiarities” (read: gay) make him a risk at a time of intense nationalism and religious adherence. But his unimpeachable talent quickly transforms the town, uplifting voices that hadn’t been heard at such a volume before, helping to provide hope to those sorely in need.
That number can be a little too high in The Choral, a film that busies itself with too many characters in need of too many scenes there just isn’t enough time for. There’s Roger Allam as a grieving mill-owner cursed by a love of music but a lack of talent, Robert Emms as a pianist harbouring a secret crush on his choir master, Alan Armstrong as a funeral director surviving via gallows humour, Emily Fairn as a woman dealing with the return of her note-perfect singer husband who she presumed dead while experiencing a new flirtation, Amara Okereke as a God-fearing Salvation Army member struggling with romantic feelings and Mark Addy as an open-minded photographer meeting for illicit trysts with Lyndsey Marshal’s local prostitute. The film tries to smoothly flip between these stories but, as with many an overstacked ensemble piece, we find ourselves craving more time with some while spending far too much with others.
What too often happens is that whenever Bennett spends time focusing on something knottier or darker, he quickly returns to safety instead. The most effective moments are the most difficult – Fiennes hiding grief for his German lover while others applaud the sinking of his ship, an injured soldier begging the wife who no longer loves him to provide some sad carnal pleasure one last time, the acknowledgment that accepting artistic genius might also mean embracing a life of sorrow, the idea that maybe removing a certain section of men from society allows for wider equality – but they’re too fleeting to really provide the pangs that they should. Broader sentiment over war being destructive and community being important is prioritised but never handled with enough specificity to edge us close to the grand emotional response the film wants us to have. There’s a cup-of-tea cosiness that dances past bigotries and hardships over race, gender and sexuality, leaving the film’s worldview feeling a little too rose-tinted, closer to a Hovis advert than reality.
When the big choral finally comes, there’s something a little anticlimactic to how Hytner shoots (and lights) it and then after, something a little meandering about how Bennett chooses to close out his story, tying things up with a too messy bow. We should be up on our feet but it’s hard to find enough energy.
