Film Pick of the Week: The Choral - review by Yvette Huddleston
The Choral Amazon Prime, review by Yvette Huddleston
Filmed on location in and around Saltaire, this affecting elegiac period drama from the pen of national treasure Alan Bennett and directed by Nicholas Hytner has a slightly harder edge than might at first be apparent.
Set in a small fictional Yorkshire town, somewhere near Bradford, in 1916 during the First World War, it tells the story of a local choral society that is thrown into disarray when their chorus master decides to join up and heads off to the fighting on the Western Front. The group is short of men anyway because of the war and without a musical leader they are a little lost. The committee, led by mill owner Alderman Bernard Duxbury (Roger Allam), set about finding a replacement and along comes taciturn Dr Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes). He is highly qualified for the post but some members are scandalised by the fact that he lived in Germany before the war, and there are rumours of ‘peculiarities’ – he has had close friendships with other men and he is an atheist, which elicits a classic Bennett line from another character “There are atheists now; there’s one in Bradford.”
When Guthrie arrives, he shakes things up by declaring his admiration for German music and the country’s enlightened attitude towards the arts in general. Since the choral’s committee veto any suggestion of German music – Bach, Beethoven and Handel are all rejected out of hand – Guthrie proposes that they perform a radical new version of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Guthrie sets about recruiting singers including a disabled young soldier, recently back from the War, and angel-voiced young soprano and Salvation Army nurse Mary (Amara Okereke) as the choir and the community and singers pull together for their performance. Bennett fills in the affecting back stories of many of the characters we meet exploring darker themes of grief, loss and regret. All their lives have been touched by the war in some way and music-making is a balm.
The supporting cast features an array of fine British character actors including Mark Addy as Mr Fyton the town photographer, Alun Armstrong as Mr Trickett the local undertaker and Ron Cook as the town’s vicar. And there is a scene-stealing cameo appearance from Simon Russell-Beale as Elgar. There are some particularly poignant moments involving Addy as he photographs eager young men dressed in their shiny new uniforms, excited about becoming soldiers, unaware of the brutal reality that awaits them.