A One Mann’s Movies review of “The Choral” (2025, 3*, 12A).
I’d been looking forward to “The Choral”, as had the Illustrious Mrs Movie Man, and intentionally avoided seeing it at the LFF as I knew the IMMM was keen to see it. But I have to admit to being a little disappointed by it. Thankfully, the IMMM liked it better than I did (giving it 4 stars). But I felt all of the elements didn’t quite coalesce into a fully satisfactory whole.
One Mann’s Movies Rating:
Plot:
Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) is recruited to replace a choir’s enlisted existing choir master. Mocked and mistrusted for his German past, he must knock a rag-tag set of townspeople together to perform a master-work by Edward Elgar. Meanwhile, three local boys, just turning 18, are contemplating just two things…. 1) how to get laid and 2) their upcoming conscription into the army (in that order).
Certification:
UK: 12A; US: R. (From the BBFC web site: “Infrequent strong language, moderate sex”. Another interesting certification mismatch here between the US and UK… only a 12 in the UK and an R in the US. The mismatch is due to a (quite lenient in my opinion) treatment of the sexual scenes by the BBFC. There is a fairly raunchy hand-job given on the moors (back view only) and scenes of visits to the local madam. There is also one prominent use of the F-word.)
Talent:
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Taylor Uttley, Emily Fairn, Amara Okereke, Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Ron Cook, Simon Russell Beale, Jacob Dudman, Taylor Uttley, Oliver Briscombe, Shaun Thomas, Robert Emms, Thomas Howes.
Directed by: Nicholas Hytner.
Written by: Alan Bennett.
Running Time: 1h 53m.
Summary:
Positives:
- Great historical setting for the film and lovingly created production design and costuming.
- A story that doesn’t go quite where you’d expect it to go.
- Good ensemble performances.
Negatives:
- The dialogue in the script felt forced and clunky.
- Would Mary Lockwood have been so readily courted in 1917 Yorkshire?
Full Review of “The Choral”:
A clever opening.
I very much enjoyed the opening shot of the film. A bleak horizon. Figures of men marching over the horizon out of the mist. You are just waiting for the crackle of machine gun fire and Baldrick getting a splinter from the ladder. But no. We are on the Yorkshire moors, with some of the young men of the mill town (that we will be following) acting as ‘beaters’ for the local toff’s pheasant shoot. It’s a clever deception. As the camera pans round, we see the valley below and the multiple mills belching smoke out of their chimneys.
Great sets and production design.
When we get into the heart of the film, you can’t not be impressed by the effort that’s gone into its making. The movie was shot in Saltaire – a model Victorian village and tourist attraction near Bradford in West Yorkshire, and with the supporting production design and excellent costuming (from the legendary Jenny Beavan) the film really does look the part.
A curate’s egg of a screenplay: the good bit.
The screenplay is by the legend that is Alan Bennett, but it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Firstly, the story goes off in some interesting and ‘non-traditional’ directions. It hints at a past for Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes), with him heading to the library each day to (suspiciously!) scour the naval reports. But the truth hits home hard at one point in the movie.
And then there is the ‘performance’. You expect, for a film like this, that the story arc will be that the rehearsals will start out dire and build to a triumphant concert in the finale that – unknown to everyone – Edward Elgar is actually attending and who heaps praise on them all for their bravado. Hussar!
But no. Elgar is in it (played by Simon Russell Beale, playing a very similar role to that of the recent “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale“). But the story goes in a different direction from what I would have expected.
A curate’s egg of a screenplay: the less good bit.
Where I had issues with the screenplay was the dialogue which came across as false and lumpy to me, particularly in the first half of the film. While it delivered a few smiles and even the odd laugh, many of the lines that you might have expected to land as humorous just clanked to the ground like leaden weights.
This may have been my imagination, but I felt that even the normally excellent Ralph Fiennes seemed to be being fed lines he didn’t feel particularly comfortable with.
A good ensemble cast.
Don’t get me wrong, Fiennes still delivers a solid performance, as do the rest of the cast, but I think this was in spite of the script, not because of it.
Roger Allam, Mark Addy and Alun Armstrong make for a fine pairing as the members of the choral committee, with Armstrong’s character, as the local undertaker, bemoaning the fact that death notices were going out to houses all around the town each day but he wasn’t getting a penny in income!
I also particularly enjoyed the performance of relative newcomer Amara Okereke playing the virginal Salvation Army singer Mary Lockwood. A scene where she refuses to have anything to do with a naked Mitch (Shaun Thomas), who desperately strips in front of her on his last night before leaving for the front, is surprisingly poignant.
But….
…in terms of the casting, would Mitch really have sought a relationship with Mary Lockwood, a person of colour, back in 1917? With everyone else going “Yep, OK”? I remember I had the same issue with the reaction to the character of Abe in “The Railway Children Return“, again set in a Yorkshire town. And that was set in 1944, 27 years later! I suggested that that was an example of “woke-whitewashing” in terms of the casting, and I feel the same might be true here.
Summary Thoughts:
I mean, it’s fine. My film-reviewing friend, Scott Forbes on Facebook as “Very British. Very nice. Very Sunday afternoon with a tea and biscuits type of film”. And I agree. But given my anticipation for the film, it fell rather short for what I thought was some very clunky dialogue in Alan Bennett’s script.
Where to watch?
Trailer:
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYMIhLwiHVs.
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