Rent The Choral (2025)

Harmonies Over Hysteria - The Choral review by griggs

Some films feel like a warm cardigan you didn’t choose, but end up wearing anyway. This is one of those: tidy, polite, and faintly comforting, even when it hints at real conflict.

The Choral is a WWI-set period piece with an ensemble that’s consistently watchable. Ralph Fiennes, as the choirmaster, brings a pinched edge and a bit of bite, which helps stop the whole thing sliding into pure cosiness. The story flirts with moral tension—community spirit versus suspicion, art versus propriety—but it usually gets smoothed over just as it might dig in. 

What keeps it moving is Alan Bennett’s dialogue: dry, neatly placed lines that spark and vanish. Still, for all the craft, it rarely wrong-foots you or lingers after the credits. Pleasant, competent, and already fading as you walk out.

Concentrating on one story thread helps... - The Choral review by The REAL Film Cricket

The story behind The Choral is definitely valid and certainly is a tale to make you think, my problems with it from the start is it felt lightweight with some of the more heavier aspects of the story; the huge, huge weight of World War 1 was projected onto the characters and you the viewer, gave me the impression of a ‘television show’ rather than a film. Put in some of the good actors, Alun Armstrong, Mark Addy and a few others who could do their roles without even concentrating and for me there definitely was something missing from The Choral.

The problem I would have writing this is trying to clip in the overbearing WW1 problems, being gay, and a choral project. That’s three topics that the film could 100% concentrate on and make it a ‘film about xxxxx’ but it does not but instead flitters between the topics. Nothing entirely wrong with that but for me in this film it does not fully work.

Add in Ralph Fiennes easily portraying his character, to underline his acting ability and skills, and this takes the story up a few levels. The young lads were believable as men ready for call up but I would say historically I think the attitude in 1916 to the war was a tad different to what was displayed. Not that it made a big difference, but it could had pushed the film in a different direction.

The main stumbling block was the makers definitely wanted the organising and outright ‘fantasticness’ of the choral project to be the main topic and I think this might have been a slight mistake. The film tries to highlight various points and in this case it seems to flop onto one, flop off it again, and some are never picked up, or are let go in a very slack manner. Definitely a longer running TV series might have worked better.

Another problem for me – and yes I know the title of the film – but the music type has no interest for me and never has. So, I couldn’t buy into the desperation to be ‘great’ and sing wonderfully and so forth, I enjoyed parts of it, but it was not a type of music that would hold me with fascination.

All in all, a story about a gay man who lived in Germany trying to help a choral project in World War 1 could have been one film – and the hefty responsibility and what happens when you are a young man waiting to be called up and possibly join the rows and rows of bodies in Europe could have been another.

Put them together and they dilute a bit too much for me.