Ralph Fiennes helps a lost generation find a voice | The Choral (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts - video Dailymotion

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Ralph Fiennes heads to a Yorkshire town hit hard by World War I in Alan Bennett's drama, but Film Brain thinks a chorus of voices and subplots needed to be more defined.

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00:00Ralph Fiennes helps the choral hit the high notes in this drama written by Alan Bennett.

00:04Set in 1916, the fictional Yorkshire town of Ramsden has lost their choir master to join

00:09the war effort, so they hire Fiennes' Henry Guthrie, who has recently returned from living

00:13in Germany and ruffles feathers as a result. But trying to stage Elgar's dream of Gerontius,

00:19chosen to avoid a German composer, proves a challenge when the town is missing so many of

00:24its young men. This is helmed by theatre director Nicholas Heitner, whose last several films have

00:28been Alan Bennett adaptations, namely The History Boys and The Lady in the Van, although this is

00:33actually an original screenplay by Bennett. I do have to admit that I'm a bit mixed on Bennett's

00:38work myself and I'm still scarred by the infamous film version of Hallelujah and its shockingly awful

00:44twist. As expected, Fiennes' excellence is Guthrie, who has a clear passion for music, but his atheism

00:50and fondness for Germany has made him persona non grata. There's an amusing running gag where he keeps

00:55being chastised for occasionally speaking in German. But there's a certain tragedy that he went to

01:00Germany for the arts, but has been forced back by the war in the increased hostility as a result.

01:05There's also the fact that Guthrie is a clustered gay man, a recurring theme in Bennett's work,

01:10and he searches for news of the face of his German lover regularly, and he's only able to speak about

01:15this to also clustered pianist Robert Eames, who announces that he wants to be a conscientious objector,

01:20and whose potential imprisonment threatens the performance. Fiennes' acting is very delicately

01:25layered and nuanced, with occasional flashes of barely suppressed anger, and he's the closest thing

01:31to a central figure in what is fittingly for a film about to acquire a big ensemble piece, even if it

01:36gets a bit overwhelmed by subplots. Where the call most succeeds is as a poignant tribute to a lost

01:42generation, and that absence is felt everywhere, and the film focuses on a group of young men about to be

01:48conscripted, who are so young they've barely experienced life. Bennett's thing as the humor is

01:54still here, but this is a bittersweet film, a time where people still believe the first world war

01:59will be over quickly, but the grim realization at its true cost is emerging. Guthrie stages Gerontius as

02:05a war tribute, something which they have to hide from Simon Russell Beale's Elgar, who pops up near the

02:10end and uses injured soldiers in the choir, including Jacob Dudman as one who returns, having lost an arm to

02:16find his lover has moved on. Recognizable faces like Roger Allen, Mark Addy and Al Armstrong also have

02:23their own plots, many of them knocking on the door of sex worker Lindsay Marshall. That lack of focus

02:29diminishes the film's emotional impact, especially as the last section drags past a point where it

02:34really should have ended, but it has moments where it finds its voice.

Ralph Fiennes helps a lost generation find a voice | The Choral (REVIEW) | Projector Shorts

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