Producers: Kevin Loader, Nicholas Hytner and Damian Jones   Director: Nicholas Hytner Screenplay: Alan Bennett   Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Roger Allam, Mark Addy, Alun Armstrong, Robert Emms, Lyndsey Marshal, Ron Cook, Amara Okereke, Emily Fairn, Shaun Thomas, Jacob Dudman, Oliver Briscombe, Taylor Uttley, Roxanne Morgan, Fenella Woolgar, Oliver Criss, Malcolm Sinclair, Carolyn Pickles, Angela Curran, Christopher Dean, Eunice Roberts, Reuben Bainbridge and Simon Russell Beale   Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Grade: B

The British tradition of local choral singing is combined with a mournful antiwar message by Alan Bennett in his latest collaboration with director Nicholas Hytner, his first original film script since “A Private Function” (1984). The result is an elegiac tribute to the transcendent power of music in the most terrible of times.

It’s not surprising that Bennett, having entered his ninth decade, should adopt an autumnal tone in contriving a story set in 1916, as the men of the Yorkshire mill town of Ramsden are either enlisting in the army or being conscripted for military service as they reach eighteen.  The impact on the local chorus, a special interest of Alderman Bernard Duxbury (Roger Allam) and his associates, local photographer Joe Fyton (Mark Addy) and undertaker Herbert Trinkett (Alun Armstrong), has been devastating, as many of the men in the group have been called up for service in the trenches.  To make matters worse, the chorus director has announced his enlistment just as rehearsals for Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion” are scheduled to begin.

For the three town luminaries, it’s imperative to replace him at once.  Various possibilities are discussed, but Duxbury offers a controversial one: Dr. Henry Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes), an accomplished musician now heading a small group playing background music at what appears to be the town’s pre-eminent dining establishment.  The vicar (Ron Cook) would prefer a married man—rumors are circulating about how Guthrie scours newspapers in the library for news about naval losses, suggesting he’s attached to a sailor.  But the main objection is that he’s spent years in Germany, and his association with “the Hun” will elicit local hostility.

Guthrie is understandably hesitant, but ultimately agrees, with the proviso that he bring along his pianist/aide Robert Horner (Robert Emms).  His high standards almost immediately rankle the old guard in the chorus, even distressing Duxbury, who’s always sung the tenor solos, but whose voice is hardly first-rate. And his appointment does engender some patriotic backlash—which leads to a decision to replace the Passion by Bach, who was after all German, with “The Dream of Gerontius” by Sir Edward Elgar (Simon Russell Beale), provided the English composer will agree.

The struggle to mount a performance of “Gerontius” is the centerpiece of “Choral,” and Fiennes delivers a predictably solid turn as the stern taskmaster whose personal life is, in fact, connected with his recourse to the daily papers. A surprise visit from Elgar himself—a scene-stealing cameo by Simon Russell Beale—makes the task all the more difficult.  But it really acts as the hub of a circle of stories that Bennett arranges around it, connected to it like the spokes of a narrative wheel. 

One involves Horner, whose induction into the army leads to his declaration as a conscientious objector, though as one of the chatty choristers, likable Flo (Roxanne Morgan), implies, his refusal to serve in combat also points to his (and Guthrie’s) unspoken homosexuality.  Bennett uses his inquisition before the draft board to introduce a trio of pompous board members—a self-important aristocratic lady (Fenella Woolgar), a snooty churchman (Malcolm Sinclair) and an officious major (Oliver Criss).  They’re all stereotypes, presented by Bennett as emblematic of the types prevalent during the Great War, and the actors tear into the brief roles with abandon.  Similarly, Bennett uses two elderly ladies who consider themselves the “backbone” of the contraltos (Carolyn Pickles and Angela Curran) to represent the town’s rumor mill.   

Other plot threads are more extended, particularly those involving young men on the cusp of draft age and the women they become involved with.  Prominent among them are mill worker Ellis (Taylor Uttley) and his buddy Lofty (Oliver Briscombe), who’s tasked with delivering notices of soldiers’ deaths to their wives and mothers.  The former, prompted to join the chorus after realizing its romantic possibilities, falls into a relationship with Bella (Emily Fairn), whose fiancée Clyde (Jacob Dudman) is missing in action and presumed dead.  When Clyde abruptly shows up alive, missing an arm, the triangle of affection becomes strained.  So does the chorus, since Clyde proves to possess a magnificent tenor that would be a marked improvement on Duxbury’s.  Meanwhile the alderman is struggling to reconnect with his wife (Eunice Roberts), who’s virtually catatonic with grief over the loss of their son in the trenches.

Then there’s Mary (Amara Okereke), a Salvation Army nurse with a glorious soprano who will ultimately share solo honors in “Gerontius” with Clyde.  She catches the eye of Mitch (Shaun Thomas), Ellis’ drinking buddy.  As for Lofty, his ambition to have sex once in his life before being sent off to combat will depend on Ramsden’s notorious but, as it turns out, good-hearted prostitute Mrs. Bishop (Lyndsey Marshal).

And that’s not all.  Bennett fills his script with character after character, many only glimpsed, like Podge (Christopher Dean), the bakery shop clerk who objects to being refused induction because he suffers from epilepsy—“only occasionally,” he tells the examining physician in a line that’s typical of the author in being both funny and sad.

Though Fiennes is the star around whom the story revolves, “The Choral” is a period ensemble piece intricately constructed to give a small army of actors opportunities—some brief, some extended—to recreate a vanished world, and they all respond with enthusiasm.  Hytner and his colleagues—production designer Peter Francis and costumer Jenny Beavan in particular—bring it vividly to visual life, while cinematographer Mike Elsey bathes the Yorkshire locales in a luminous glow.  Hytner and editor Tariq Anwar move things along at a relaxed pace, a tone accentuated by George Fenton’s orchestral score.  (Fenton presumably also arranged the portions of “Gerontius” we hear.  He also has an on-screen cameo as Elgar’s chauffeur.)    

The sheer number of characters in “The Choral” occasionally makes it unwieldy, but Bennett’s facility in amusing dialogue and Hytner’s skill with his cast make the film both charming and poignant.  It’s an engaging capstone to a writing career that began way back with “Beyond the Fringe” and has rightly made Bennett one of Britain’s most beloved modern literary figures. 

Producers: Lizzie Shapiro, Lucy McKendrick, Steven Schneider, Roy Lee and Derek Dauchy   Director: Charlie Polinger   Screenplay: Charlie Polinger   Cast: Joel Edgerton, Everett Blunck, Kayo Martin, Kenny Rasmussen, Lucas Adler, Caden Burris, Elliott Heffernan, Lennox Espy, Kolton Lee and Nicolas Raşovan Distributor: IFC The Independent Film Company

Grade: B

There have been many films about bullying, but few have gotten quite so far under the skin as this dark fantasy about the cruelty perpetrated by adolescent boys at a sports camp.  There’s a “Lord of the Flies” feeling to the plot, because though the boys aren’t without adult supervision, as represented in the coach the boys derisively refer to as Daddy Wags (Joel Edgerton) it proves almost spectacularly clueless and ineffectual.  (If the story were set in 2025, one can imagine his charges dismissing him with a chant of “6-7.”)

But the year is 2003, and the place the Tom Lerner Water Polo Camp for boys of twelve and thirteen.  Ben (Everett Blunck) is a newcomer, an awkward kid emotionally scarred by his mother’s sudden separation from her husband to be with her lover and his move to a new home. Joining an existing class, he’s the odd man out, desperate to fit into an established group whose unofficial leader is Jake (Kayo Martin), a sly curlyhead whose smile conceals a sinister ability to detect others’ weaknesses, which he then pounces upon.  He immediately seizes on Ben’s speech impediment—he pronounces “stop” as “sop”—to put him in his place near the bottom of the pecking order, coining his new nickname, “Soppy.”

But the very bottom is occupied by Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), an outcast ridiculed for his odd habits but especially for his skin rash, which Jake leads the other boys in his crew—Julian (Lennox Espy), Logan (Lucas Adler), Tic Tac (Elliott Heffernan), Matt (Caden Burris) and Corbin (Kolton Lee)—to call The Plague.  They avoid contact with him, even scooting away to another table in the cafeteria when he approaches.

Ben is more sensitive than the others, secretly befriending Eli though fearing the danger of contagion.  Inevitably his solicitude attracts the attention of Jake and the others, and leads to his being ostracized as well—and to a particularly nasty assault on him in the dormitory.  The coach tries to help, but his sympathetic reminiscences about the problems he faced as a youngster strike Ben as little more than irrelevant pabulum from an ancient time.  Eventually a confrontation between the boys occurs.

It happens during a practice in the pool.  It’s the place where Polinger and cinematographer Steven Breckon contrive some of their most haunting visuals, shooting the boys—and in a few instances a girls’ team—from below, creating mesmerizing images with a blue-green halo.  But the locker rooms, hallways and other interiors of the production design by Chad Keith and Jason Singleton are also central to fashioning an atmosphere of claustrophobia and dread, a mood reinforced by the unhurried editing of Henry Hayes and Simon Njoo as well as the somber, choral-inflected score by Johan Lenox.

Edgerton is the major name in the cast, and he’s fine; but he plays second fiddle to his young costars, who, in contrast to those in so many films about adolescents and teens, actually look their characters’ ages.  Blunck, who was hobbled by the artificiality and affected writing of Nicholas Colia’s “Griffin in Summer,” is much better here, capturing both Ben’s vulnerable and his principled sides.  But it’s Martin who’s truly revelatory, endowing Jake with quiet malevolence while convincing us that even his insolence toward adults might be tolerated because of his engagingly boyish manner.  As directed by Polinger the rest of the boys are admirably natural, though Heffernan sometimes has difficulty expressing Eli’s eccentricities persuasively. 

There’s much discussion today about toxic masculinity.  “The Plague” succeeds in conjuring up a vision of that phenomenon in its earliest stages, in terms of both the boys’ treatment of one another and their glib, silly talk about sex.  It makes for a frighteningly poetic glimpse into the adolescent mind.