THE CHORAL

Watch The Trailer

Storyline (warning: spoilers)

Set in the fictional Yorkshire village of Ramsden in 1916, The Choral inhabits a world where the war is distant – yet its shadow lies over every street. Many of the young men are gone to the front, their names echoing through the church and village hall. Those left behind hover between waiting and pretending that life continues as before. The film reunites Alan Bennett’s pen and Nicholas Hytner’s direction for their fourth film together (The Madness of King George, The History Boys, The Lady in the Van). Bennett’s eye for endurance and small absurdities, his distinct blend of humour and heartbreak, lends the story a warmth.
Determined to keep something of the village’s heart intact, the local choir opens its doors to all. The remaining boys – “fodder for the mill, fodder for the front” – join with nervous energy and untested voices. Around them unfold the small dramas of youth: crushes, jealousies, the thrill of being noticed – all under the dark cloud of war. Hytner’s direction keeps the tone measured, his pacing unhurried, the village life unfolding in laughter across fields, flirtation in the lanes, and the faint hum of something approaching. Ralph Fiennes, in superb form, is characteristically restrained as Dr Guthrie, the new choirmaster whose time in Germany prompts quiet gossip and complicates his loyalties. Dressed in tweed with a pocket watch gleaming, he brings calm authority tinged with sorrow. Alongside the enemy across the Channel, Guthrie sees the human faces behind the rhetoric of war, and thus he is both insider and outsider.
Beneath his composure runs a conviction that compassion itself has become a form of dissent. When Jacob Dudman’s traumatised soldier laments “life’s fucking shit”, Guthrie replies simply: “So, sing.” It becomes the film’s credo: music as both defiance and survival, a way to hold despair at bay. While the choir scenes are wonderful, the film is most affecting in its quietest moments. Jubilant farewells at the railway station are almost immediately shadowed by trains bringing home the wounded. The Choral is both elegy and celebration: a reminder that even in the quietest corners, song can sound like survival – the fragile note of hope that refuses to fade.