The Choral Review: Stale Wartime Slop

The Choral is a turgid affair that has some promising moments of musical emotional release but is too often diluted by bland storytelling and camerawork.

It’s 1916, and the fictional town of Ramsden, Yorkshire, has been decimated by the ongoing war. The male populace is waning, meaning the youngest adults are now set to be drafted, and the heartbreaking loss of the war is summed up by teenager Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) cycling around the village and delivering casualty telegrams to victims’ family members. These earlier stages of The Choral work well to lay the groundwork for the film, which is directed by Nicholas Hytner (The History Boys) and written by Alan Bennett (The Lady in the Van). We see a village under intense pressure and clouded by grief, but the film’s main plot stems into something different altogether.

One lesser-thought of side effect of the war is that on the local choir. After losing so many members to conscription, the society turns to Dr. Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes, The Grand Budapest Hotel) to reenergise the group. Fiennes is as great as always, but he’s working with an underwritten character, which is surprising for a screenplay from the mind of celebrated playwright and screenwriter Bennett. Dr. Guthrie’s lengthy residence in Germany raises interesting complexities for his character, as does his presumed homosexuality, but neither are treated as anything more than throwaway references. In general, The Choral is too wide in its reach, never specifically honing in on anything promising within its screenplay.

And whilst these earlier stages are good enough to set the scene, they are decidedly bland. There is little onscreen dynamism; in particular, the script never gives off any energy, which is most noticeable as it attempts to hit some more humorous notes. Everything feels like it might have been better seen on stage. The material does not seem to fit well with being on screen. That is before considering some rather bizarre tangents to the plot that veer from the mundane into the offensive, with various misogynistic tendencies cluttering Bennett’s script. For a film that feels so ordinary in most aspects, these moments are particularly surprising. 

Where The Choral does pick up in tempo is in its music-based sections, when we witness the society practicing their performance of Edward Elgar’s “The Dream of Gerontius.” Here, the camera moves with a bit more life, skirting around the faces of the singers, and picking up on the emotional resonance of the music. Jacob Dudman (The Last Kingdom) as Clyde (a soldier who loses an arm overseas and comes back haunted by what he has seen) delivers a particularly moving performance as one of the leads in Elgar’s orchestra. The emotional release of music parallels perfectly with the intense suffering of war, so it is a shame that these moments of The Choral are so fleeting, contained within such half-hearted fare.

The Choral was screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 12-17 October, 2025.