The British emotions, they are so very buttoned up in The Choral (now on Netflix), a Ralph Fiennes-led drama in which he plays a choir director tasked with staging an oratorio during a time when the chorus keeps losing members thanks to the draft. It’s a World War I-set story from director Nicholas Hytner and writer Alan Bennett, who teamed up for 1994’s notable The Madness of King George. And as this type of U.K.-set period piece tends to go, it has bits of comedy and bits of tragedy, but do any of those bits move us to laugh or cry or feel much of anything at all? Maybe a little, but only just.
THE CHORAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: It’s 1916. Ellis (Taylor Uttley) and Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) are teenagers in a quaint English town built around a steel mill — a steel mill that’s pumping and billowing smoke thanks to the ongoing calamity of World War I. They’re a smidge too young to go off to fight in the trenches, but their day will come. Until then, Lofty is tasked with delivering bad-news telegrams to women who have lost their sons or husbands to the conflict, while Ellis, a not-so-secret horndog, sees a silver lining: “Grief — it’s an opportunity,” he cracks, joking, but also not joking. They may have found something to wile away their time before dodging bullets, though, namely, joining the local choral, which is desperate for singers, since so many are off fighting. Including the director, who signs up and ships out, compelled by his patriotic duty.
Said departure leaves Alderman Duxbury (Roger Allam), owner of the mill and financier of the choral, and his partner Mr. Fyton (Mark Addy) in the lurch, with no one to direct Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. They settle on Dr. Henry Guthrie (Fiennes) to be chorus master, and “settle” is exactly the right word. See, not only is Henry an atheist, and gay, he also lived in Germany for a while, and all that adds up to him being a, shall we say, controversial choice. Guthrie doesn’t help matters by frequently speaking in German, which happens to be the same language spoken by the people who are currently killing the aforementioned sons and husbands. He tones it down, though, and kinda seems neutral on the conflict, for reasons to be revealed later, but don’t worry, those reasons don’t make us think poorly of him.
But Guthrie does value the power of art to lift, heal and perhaps most importantly to him, “transcend the social order.” After determining that Bach and a variety of other composers’ works are too Teutonic for performance in this context, Guthrie, Duxbury, and Fyton choose Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, and get to recruiting singers literally off the street, and in pubs and military hospitals. And from this ragtag group of misfits spring little vignettes: Bella (Emily Fairn), weary of waiting for word from the front about her MIA boyfriend, takes a new lover — and of course Clyde (Jacob Dudman) not only returns with an arm missing, he wins the role of Gerontius. Mary (Amara Okereke), the only Black choral member, graduates from Salvation Army singer to the other lead, while Mitch (Shaun Thomas) tries to woo her. Guthrie’s pianist Robert (Robert Emms) gets his dreaded draft letter, and decides to be a conscientious objector. Duxbury struggles to break through to his wife, who’s been grieving since their son died in the war. Meanwhile, Guthrie hones and shapes and adapts Gerontius and whips the chorus into shape like a taskmaster, and hopefully can stage this thing before it all falls apart – the show, the town, maybe even the world.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? I guess The Choral is sort of a gay-man-during-wartime drama like The Imitation Game crossed with let’s-put-on-a-show (in England) plot like The Full Monty crossed with a ragtag-group-of-misfits underdog sports movie like, I dunno, The Mighty Ducks? Sure. Close enough.
Performance Worth Watching: Fiennes is not particularly challenged here, leaving the door open for an affecting display of pain and heartbreak (and PTSD) from Dudman (most recently seen in the Scrubs reboot), who Delivers A Poignant Speech with the gravitas it deserves.
Sex And Skin: Just a bit of randy talk, and a bare male bum.
Our Take: It’s easy to appreciate how Hytner steers The Choral away from manipulative sentimentality — considering his no-nonsense performance, Fiennes may have been the most resistant to that — but the end result is muted, its emotions spread a bit too thin among the sprawling ensemble cast. And while the film doesn’t rouse us into anything resembling passion, we at least feel a modicum of investment in what happens to these characters, sympathetic in their situations and gentle in their faults and foibles. It’s not a big ask for the audience; selling lightly melancholy stories about wartime solidarity in tight communities is shooting fish in a barrel.
But it’s also effectively plaintive in its presentation of some sad truths. And Bennett’s screenplay doesn’t simply present art as a balm during hard times. Guthrie’s pithy assertions about the value of art goes deeper than that and we’re prompted to contemplate one of the major curiosities of the human condition: Why do people spend more time building war machines for destruction instead of fostering community and mutual interest via music? Art is always the first thing to be sacrificed on the altar of pragmatism, by people who don’t understand its pragmatic application to the human soul. (There’s even a whimsical moment when the young baker and choir singer wonders why the Brits and the Germans can’t unite in their appreciation for the same styles of pastries.) Even if The Choral doesn’t light a fire under us with its array of microdramas, it at least provides some nutritious food for thought.
Our Call: Consider this a medium-passionate song of praise for The Choral, so you can go ahead and STREAM IT.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.