The Choral (2025) is uplifting and verges on the sentimental. However, the movie has a satirical edge and falls into the "uncanny valley," as it were, between kitsch and sober toughmindedness -- the film is interesting primarily for the expectations that it defeats. The movie's director Nicholas Hytner (and the writer the esteemed Alan Bennett) want the picture to affirm the power of art in the face of war and mindless patriotic jingoism but constantly undercuts this wholesome message with cynical political and sexual subtexts. The movie is interesting in a high-toned BBC manner. Viewers of Brit Box and PBS will recognize many regulars from BBC productions, familiar faces from Downton Abbey and the UK mystery and crime shows. Ralph Fiennes stars as a beleaguered choir director who works tirelessly to produce Edward Elgar's Dream of Gerontius in a provincial English milling city. (There's a gorgeous vale disfigured by several mill buildings perpetually spewing smoke into the pellucid air.). I like this picture and recommend it: it's modestly inspiring but, also, acknowledges the darkness at its heart, the Great War that is raging in 1916 in France and Belgium. Indeed, one of the principal characters is employed delivering telegrams from His Royal Majesty to local housewives and mothers advising them of the death of their next of kin on the Western Front. As Pauline Kael remarks in her review of a Renoir film, it's easy to be anti-war in the context of WWI, an entirely misguided and futile exercise in carnage that left the world far worse than before -- it's harder mobilize those sentiments in the context of WWII. The film doesn't make easy anti-war points, despite the size and slowmoving quality of this target and, to the contrary, the picture focuses most extensively on the relationship of art, with its aspirations toward the eternal, and current affairs.
Fiennes plays Dr. Guthrie, an acclaimed choral director. He agrees to rehearse and conduct the St. Matthew Passion by Bach in the West Yorkshire town. The locals are incensed at the selection of "Hun Muck" by the local choir, threaten its members, and throw bricks through the windows of the rehearsal space. Guthrie, with his fey piano accompanist, Roger, working with the local Alderman, a mill owner who controls the town and the choral society, decide to abandon the Bach and instead present Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. Auditions are held, introducing the film's viewers to the various characters. The Alderman is enlightened and well-meaning but not a good singer; notwithstanding his vocal defects he wants to perform the leading part (Gerontius) -- the Alderman's wife is mourning for a son lost in France and has withdrawn into herself. There's an attractive Black Salvation Army missionary who all the boys in the chorus lust after. A frisky young war widow, her fiancee, I think, lost in France, sparks up a romance with one of the other lads -- then, her husband or fiancee returns from the Front sans his right arm, the arm and hand he uses for masturbation we learn in a scene in which he importunes his former lover to satisfy him digitally with her hand.. Guthrie is gay and suspected of being a German spy. This is because he reads newspapers in the local library and always studies the reports of naval engagements -- it turns out that his German lover is naval officer in the enemy navy. Roger is in love with Dr. Guthrie but can't bring himself to act on his emotions. The film proceeds briskly, efficiently setting up the situation and, then, developing the relationships between the characters with comical and poignant incidents (Alan Bennett is a leading screenwriter and playwright in the U.K. and his construction of the script is excellent and exemplary.) As it turns out, Elgar is in Manchester accepting some kind of prize and he's invited to the Chorale society that is bold enough to present his massive oratorio. The wounded soldier missing his right arm turns out to have a gorgeous voice and he supplants the Alderman in the tenor role of Gerontius. The score has to be modified extensively because the choral group is quite small and Elgar's huge Victorian orchestra is reduced to about five musicians who appear at the Sunday Brunch and evening dinners at the local hotel. The plot of Gerontius is that an elderly man has died and, then, finds himself escorted into Purgatory -- this oratorio also stirs up a lot of dispute among the vicars who are members of the choral society and staunch Church of England Protestants. Everyone agrees the 19 year old soldier missing his arm lacks the gravitas to perform the challenging role of Gerontius. But the young man who is just returned from the Western Front says that he knows what purgatory is like -- it's No Man's Land and so it is agreed that he can successfully perform the role if he is allowed to appear in his uniform to make the connection between purgatorial fires and trench warfare, This idea leads the Choral Society to decide the stage the oratorio (resulting in a funny quibble as to whether the thing is an oratorio or an opera). In any event, the Black Salvation Army girl is cast as an angel, but wears an uniform as a nurse. The male choir members are dressed as soldiers of the Great War. When Elgar discovers the changes intended to be wrought upon his magnum opus, he pitches a fit and is revealed to be a boorish prig. He stomps off in rage, shouting that the chorale society can not perform his work, scheduled for that evening. But the society offers admission to the work free of charge and advertises by word of mouth. The show is a success and greatly moving to the audience in attendance. Overhead camera angles and slow swooping crane shots show how the oratorio has been converted into a tragic account of fighting on Western Front. After the show, on the next morning, about five of the boy singers board trains for the War. Roger, the accompanist, is taken away as a conscientious objector by MPs. The moving performance has restored the Alderman's mourning wife -- she has come alive. The Salvation Army girl goes back to performing "Onward Christian Soldiers" on street corners.
Bennett's writing is crisp and unobtrusive but he manufactures some excellent scenes. When the chorale society receives word that Elgar has approved the performance (before his unfortunate visit to the town), everyone rejoices. At the same time, news arrives that a German battleship, the Pommern, has been sunk. This causes more rejoicing and the chorists sing "God Save the King." But the news also means that Dr. Guthrie's lover has been killed. Guthrie can't show his emotion but obviously is griefstricken. Roger, then, tries to console Guthrie but is rebuffed. This is a very effective and powerful ensemble of events. Bennett's script defeats expectations. On the night before they are conscripted, one of the boys tries to seduce the Salvation Army girl. Her formidable mother has talked to the boy and told him that she supports his efforts to have sex with her daughter -- she's upset about the religious business and the self-serving piety. She leaves the couple alone and the poor kid begs and begs but gets nowhere with young woman. (You expect she will capitulate but she does not.) The film sets up the expectation that the Bach Passion will be performed and effect some kind of reconciliation, at least, through art between the German and English -- but the Passion isn't performed due to the jingoistic behavior of the local bullies. One expects that the great man, Sir Elgar, will behave magnanimously but he doesn't and shows that he's a prig. Characters reverse themselves in plausible but surprising ways. The only defect in the film is its notion that a 1916 chorale society would restage the oratorio using the modernist conventions of anguished dance and high-concept costuming that would be more fitting to a performance of Benjamin Britten's War Requiem than the rather stodgy Elgar work. But an artist must be allowed his donnee as Henry James said and this plot device is central to the story and, therefore, belief must be suspended with respect to this anachronism.
The Huddlefield Choral Society (in West Yorkshire) performed The Dream of Gerontius in 1916 and this renowned choir believes that the movie is about this event. (Sir Elgar actually conducted.)
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