“God Save the King” isn’t the prettiest or most melodic anthem ever, but its slightly scolding, aggressive tenor comes to the fore early on in “The Coral.” When good news arrives from the front in the midst of the horrors of World War I, an English village choir’s amorous and spontaneous rendition of the piece interrupts a rather seedy rehearsal of Edward Elgar’s complex and haunting oratorio, The Dream of Gerontius, and makes sophisticated choral director Dr. Henry Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) roll his eyes to the back of his head. “I wish I had the confidence to sing Elgar and sing the national anthem,” he murmurs. For Guthrie, art was far more important than patriotism, and the pleasant surprise of Nicholas Hytner’s film is that, despite its bit of vulgar British embellishment, it’s largely on his side.
Perhaps that’s not so surprising. After all, “The Coral” is Alan Bennett’s first original screenplay in over 40 years. He is a national treasure, 91 years old, and his place in the firmament of British culture has never been clearly defined. A queer, agnostic, working-class Northerner, he is a staunch Royalist who has declined knighthood, and whose politics have run along the lines of what he once described as “conservative socialism.” Many of these contrasts and conflicts are also present in The Choir, some for better, some for worse, but in each case very interesting, even if director Hytner, who previously shot Bennett’s screenplay with The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and Van in the Bang, gives the whole package a deceptively buttery sheen of tea-and-crumpets nostalgia.
At first glance, the film appears to be the perfect marriage of two brands of British heartwarming crowd-pleasers. It’s a calm portrayal of wartime resilience and an underdog story about putting on a show, like The Full Monty, with the radio dial set to “Land of Hope and Glory” instead of “You Sexy Thing.” The year is 1916, and the story is set in the picturesque (and fictional) Yorkshire milling town of Lumsden. The rolling hills and cobbled, honey-filtered streets seem safe from the war raging on the continent, but it’s having a serious impact on the town’s youth. Each wave of conscripts sets out from the town’s quaint train station, bright-eyed and crisply uniformed, only to return incomplete and regrettable, if at all.
Seventeen-year-old postman Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) spends his days delivering tragic messages to newly bereaved women around Lumsden until his name is called, but his randy friend Ellis (Taylor Utley) seems to be on the bright side. The boys in the village choir, who have been severely deprived of the male voice draft, now have a chance, and soon a young choirmaster is born. Guthrie was an urbane and gifted conductor who once enjoyed some fame, but was greatly unpopular with locals on several counts, not least the fact that he had lived and studied in Germany for several years. His unapologetic atheism is useless. As well as further “peculiarities” that no one wants to name accurately. “I’m telling you, I’d rather be a family man,” says villainous board member Duxbury (Roger Allam) and leaves it at that.
Guthrie’s homosexuality remains more or less hidden throughout Bennett’s screenplay, but Fiennes plays Guthrie with a typically elegant, understated melancholy, his mourning turned inward for loves and lovers he cannot name. There is an unanswered overture from the choir’s pianist, Horner (Robert Ems). Horner is a kind-hearted and vulnerable young man, and because he is a conscientious objector to military service, he is something of an outsider. But “The Coral” is more preoccupied with the romantic lives of its young characters, as Ellis, Lofty, and their fellow teenage soldiers-to-be try desperately to lose their virginity before losing their lives. In their sights are Mary (Amara Okereke), a Salvation Army officer with a golden voice who has yet to undo a button, and Vera (Emily Fearn), a plucky type anxiously awaiting the return of her injured boyfriend Clyde (Jacob Dudman, a heartbreaking ensemble standout), but perhaps not ready to heal from his trauma.
Bennett’s screenplay jumps inconsistently between generations, foregrounding certain points of view before abruptly receding from them, but the film is never distracting. Guthrie’s ambitious plan to perform Elgar’s lofty work (with an out-of-key choir and three-piece orchestra) gives the story a satisfying narrative impetus. Even if it doesn’t culminate in the unexpected artistic triumph you might expect, there’s a more nuanced and honest morality here, through a hilariously deflating and insane cameo by Simon Russell Beale as Elgar himself, championing artistic aspiration, honesty, and compromise all at once.
But the film is at its best, whether it shares Guthrie’s parched indignation at demonstrations of national pride, or dew-drenched for its lone unlikely sex scene: a passionless, reluctant hand-job in the wilderness. Whether or not it eschews romanticism, it’s a moment of quiet revolt against our expectations of mellow British viewing comfort, an understated but tender depiction of bodies and souls ravaged by war and Britain’s reserves. Even if it’s carefully and handsomely dressed by Mike Ealy’s pristine, tanned lensing, George Fenton’s sumptuous scoring, and Jenny Bevan’s perfectly pressed costumes, “The Coral” has an ugly open wound. At its best, Bennett’s writing cuts through the gauze.
