‘The Choral’ review: Ralph Fiennes is a provincial choir master in gentle wartime drama

Dir: Nicholas Hytner. UK. 2025. 113mins

A sprawling First World War period comedy drama about a British choir reaching for normalcy through performance, The Choral boasts a humorous approach to a community’s inability to directly speak about the horrors of war. Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Henry Guthrie, a conductor whose exacting exterior hides a man in mourning who is called on to be the choir master in the provincial town of Ramsden, Yorkshire. Visually influenced by the work of painter John Singer Sargent, The Choral  is a narratively jumbled film whose unrestrained sweetness and adept ensemble tie up some of the film’s looser ends. 

 Broad generational appeal

Director Nicholas Hytner has previously made distinctly British works including Allelujah, The Lady In The Van, The History Boys, and The Madness Of King George; he is also a prolific theatre director. This Sony Pictures Classics release should gather plenty of momentum after its Toronto premiere towards a November 7 UK release and December 25 US bow. Fiennes is coming off an Academy Award nomination for best actor with Conclave—another costume play about breaking norms during a moment of instability—and his steady presence may also court audiences. With a supporting cast filled with equally dependable character actors such as Roger Allam and Lyndsey Marshal, alongside newcomers Jacob Dudman and Taylor Uttley, The Choral’s vibrant mix of talent should help it retain some broad generational appeal. 

Written by longtime Hytner collaborator Alan Bennett, who also wrote Lady In The Van, The History Boys and The Madness Of King George, the film initially follows best friends Ellis (Uttley) and Lofty (Oliver Briscombe), two 17-year olds who are just young enough not to be conscripted. While a cheeky Ellis sees the war as an opportunity to romance the women left behind, Lofty delivers telegrams to the families of casualties. Hytner then changes perspective to mill owner Alderman Duxbury (Allam), who is in need of young men to stage the choral society’s next performance as most of the existing members are away at war.

The choral society’s audition serves to introduce us to the film’s talented cast. There’s Mary (Amara Okereke, a fantastic find here), a devout Salvation Army volunteer with the voice of an angel; a teenage Mitch (Shaun Thomas), who’s immediately smitten by Mary; the saucy sex worker Mrs. Bishop (Marshal) and Bella (Emily Fairn), a woman awaiting the return of MIA boyfriend Clyde (Dudman). Each character seems to cross snobby society’s usual class boundaries. But with the war decimating their ranks, Duxbury puts aside convention to keep the choir running. 

Fiennes doesn’t appear onscreen until 20 minutes into the film. Needing a new choir master, a desperate Duxbury turns to Guthrie whose German ties—he lived there and is fluent in the language—have both effectively ended his music career and rendered him persona non grata. Much to the consternation of the choir’s priest, Guthrie is also most assuredly gay. Still, Duxbury brings him and Guthrie’s soft-spoken pianist Robert (Robert Emms) aboard.  

The Choral is tackling a fair few themes – class, sex work, queerness, war—and so the responsibility to hold it together falls on the cast. Each member sells the film’s many punchlines, particularly the flirtation that occurs between these youthful characters, with aplomb. The cast later balloons when Guthrie decided to perform ’The Dream of Gerontius’, an epic tragedy requiring him to recruit everyone from the baker to the recently returned disabled soldiers.

While the latter decision brings the war closer to home — particularly the film’s critique of the era’s propaganda promising short war—the reappearance of Clyde brings the conflict to their doorstep. And though Hytner can’t quite keep all these plates spinning (the women only exist in relationship to the men, for example), the desire to envision a diverse war film is commendable. A crowd-pleasing climactic sequence gives way to a grim reality that may extend too far, but The Choral concludes with a final image whose quiet mourning is a shot to the heart.