There are simple Sunday afternoon pleasures to be had in the gentle comedy drama The Choral, the latest collaboration for Nicholas Hytner and Alan Bennett. Their last was 2015’s The Lady in the Van, a slight, mostly unmemorable film blessed by a spiky Maggie Smith performance but cursed with an uneven tone. Unlike that, and their previous two works together on screen, this wasn’t based on a play but it often feels like it and, at too many points, that it also maybe should have been one instead. There are moments of creaky comedy and some bluntly emotional dialogue that one can more easily picture in front of a specifically catered-to live audience.
On a big screen, The Choral is a little out of place, its only moments of pure cinema courtesy of the spectacular Yorkshire scenery. Well, that and those when star Ralph Fiennes fully takes command, an actor who adds not just weight and class but also one who gives a more studied and delicate performance than many of those around him. The star is having a bit of a moment after both Conclave and 28 Years Later and while this project is in a far lower register, and far less likely to be meme-friendly, it’s further proof of his remarkable flexibility. He plays Dr Guthrie, a choir master hired by desperate locals in 1916, a time of loss and confusion, with many already dead or missing and many others waiting to be conscripted. It’s meddled with the social order and allowed for some to find space they might not have otherwise occupied, shown in the new makeup of the choir, which Guthrie must craft and control.
