Lovers of old-school quality, rejoice. Director Nicholas Hytner, writer Alan Bennett, and leading man Ralph Fiennes have just the film for you: The Choral. It will leave you with a song in your heart and, probably, a lump in your throat.
Set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Ramsden in 1916, this quintessentially British comedy-drama sees the local choral society find an unlikely saviour in Dr Guthrie (Fiennes), a once-celebrated musical director who is now turning a shilling in a local hotel, having been effectively cancelled for working in Germany.
Below, BAFTA, Olivier, and Tony Award winner Nicholas Hytner talks about getting a tune out of everyone working on screen and behind the lens.
Harry Guerin: So much of The Choral's story speaks to the present day. Was that one of the big hooks for you?
Nicholas Hytner: The big hook was the thing that I think probably applies across eras, which is how art speaks, how music speaks, particularly in times of crisis. How music draws a community together. But the proximity of war, the fact that there are young men going to the front, in Europe as we speak, that certainly spoke to me when I first read Alan Bennett's very first draft.
Ralph Fiennes's character in The Choral, Dr Guthrie - did Alan Bennett write him thinking of you?
(Laughs) Of me?! I doubt it! Even I haven't thought of me! When you direct something, when you're as close to the material as I am, when you've worked as closely as I have with Alan Bennett, there's little bits of yourself - I think this is the same for an actor - that you find across the board. Obviously, what sings to me is the fact, I suppose as I think about it, that he's trying to galvanise a whole group of people behind a creative mission. So yeah, I totally identify with that. I think nowadays we all tend to behave less tyrannically - I hope so!
The Choral is a brilliant mix of an older and a younger cast. Did you have the older cast members, who you had worked with before, in mind for those roles?
They came pretty easily, and I don't think Alan [Bennett] had anybody specifically in mind. Certainly, Ralph [Fiennes] sprang to mind very quickly. The older cast members, all of them in some capacity I've worked with before, so to make the connection between them and the part wasn't hard. The younger cast members - I worked with a very brilliant casting director - obviously, all of them were new to me. One of the most interesting and inspiring things about making the film was seeing how those kids at the beginnings of their careers and these actors who I'd worked with over the decades interacted and learned from each other.
The Choral moves from being jocular in the first half to something more profound in the second. Can you talk about that gear change and making it work?
Well, this is something that's very characteristic of the way Alan Bennett writes and the way he looks at the world. He's not at all sentimental, so that he can see the humour, the humanity in all situations. He's very, very alert to the way not just individuals interact, but communities interact.
This is a community, which even though it's under to us at the moment, thank goodness, unimaginable stress - their young men are being plucked away and sent to the front to very likely death on a daily basis - they can still find humour in their everyday situations. And more important[ly], they can find community and meaning through singing. So, the gear change happens as the young people realise that their time is so limited. And the whole community realises that by committing themselves wholeheartedly to the music that they've been introduced to, they can just briefly find something that transcends the misery that's being visited upon them by the government, over which they have no control whatsoever.
I had the sense watching The Choral that the whole film ran like clockwork. Was it one of the easiest films you've made?
(Laughs) I don't find making films easy because I'm a visitor to the film world. I've made a handful over the many years that I've been working because I'm mainly a theatre person, and I've made more plays with Alan Bennett than films. But you depend, particularly when you're in my situation, on the people around you. And yeah, they made my life, if not easy, incredibly satisfying and enjoyable.
Your other collaborations with Alan Bennett - The Madness of King George, The History Boys, The Lady in the Van - have been plays that have become films. Do you think that The Choral could become a play?
Not with me, but if somebody in the years to come thought they could see a way of turning it into a play, I'd be really interested to see it!
The Choral is in cinemas now.
