The Choral (12A) |Close-Up Film Review

This film is reassuringly English in concept, with a production team that’s rather like a meeting up of old friends, who’ve collaborated so successfully in the past.    Director Nicholas Hytner, writer Alan Bennet, composer George Fenton and editor Tariq Anwar. 

They are working with seasoned veteran actors – Roger Allam, Alun Armitage, Mark Addy and course Ralph Fiennes along with lesser known young talent, most notably  Jacob Dudan as Clyde and Amara Okereke as Salvation Army girl Sarah.

The story is set in a Yorkshire village in 1916, during what we now refer to as the First World War.  The local choral society, known in the Yorkshire manner as the Choral, has lost all its male singers, who’ve volunteered  to go and fight.  The society’s committee headed by mill owner Alderman Duxbury (Allum), who funds the enterprise, and his cohorts (Addy and Armitage) are looking to recruit the local male teenagers before the enforced call up comes in and yes, in desperation more of the village’s women too.

Then in another blow they lose their choir master to the demands of the army and they have no alternative but to call on tough musical task master Dr Guthrie (Fiennes).  This is tricky too, as Guthrie is not long back from living and working in German and  admires German culture, particularly its music.  So, like everything connected to the enemy country at this stage, even Battenburg cake, he is regarded with suspicion.  But needs must. 

Guthrie starts to pull the choir together but then, what can they now sing for the concert they have planned?  The favoured piece St Matthew passion is by J.S. Bach – German!  Every other religious masterpiece composer they can think of – Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart , Hayden – they are all German – or Austrian, same difference at this time.

Then Guthrie, who has a slight acquaintance with the very English Edward Elgar (played in colourful cameo by Simon Russell Beale) suggests that composer’s Dream of Gerontius – and the inexperienced singers set about learning it with gusto.

The war is not to be forgotten though.  In one sequence we see the next batch of khaki clad lambs for the slaughter given an enthusiastic send off at the station by the locals.  In the next scene we see wounded men getting off the train at that same station and being led away to the nursing home.  But here too there is talent for the Choral.  They may not be able to walk or even see but they can sing.

One in particular – Clyde (Jacob Dudan), who has lost an arm in the service of his country and is rejected by his fiancée Bella (Emily Fairn) in favour of another village boy yet to be called up.  But he has the perfect voice that Guthrie is looking for in his Gerontius.  And Clyde is a perfect match for Sarah (Amara Okereke), the soprano singing the Angel.

Guthrie turns Elgar’s piece into a poignant illustration of the damage and futility of war.   And soon after that the teenage boys receive their call up papers and even more young men depart for the killing fields of Flanders.  Who will there be left for the Choral now?

This is a delightful film, which is both comic and moving – typical Bennett – and is beautifully performed both by the veterans in the cast and the lesser known young talent.