Alan Bennett’s new film directed by Nicholas Hytner is out in cinemas now.
The Guardian: **** “Alan Bennett’s new film, directed by Nicholas Hytner, is a quiet and consistent pleasure: an unsentimental but deeply felt drama which subcontracts actual passion to the music of Elgar and leaves us with a heartbeat of wit, poignancy and common sense.”
The Daily Mail: ** “Also, much as the best Bennett one-liners can make the heart sing, a mediocre one just makes the eyes roll.”
The FT: *** ” Overall, though, this very trad affair offers few surprises. Nicholas Hytner, directing his fourth Bennett-written film, lays on a dusty, beige period look — and his soberly muted dynamics altogether take the edge off the script. The Choral is perfectly tuned, but it never soars. “
Variety: “But then the film is best when it chafes quietly against our expectations of gentle British comfort viewing, whether sharing in Guthrie’s dry exasperation at demonstrations of national pride, or eschewing dewy romanticism for its sole, unlikely sex scene: a passionless, reluctant handjob on the moors, discreetly depicted but tenderly illustrative of bodies and souls broken by war and English reserve.”
The Telegraph: **** “The actor leads a chorus of grief and grace in this tender First World War tale, directed by Nicholas Hytner.”
Daily Express: *** “The Choral kick off all very cheerful and Downton Abbey before Bennett desanitises such period quaintness for human realities, but without dispensing of the film’s gentle vibes. His script explores life, death, religion, sexuality, nationalism and general intolerance to the new or different, but all through too many characters.”
Time Out: *** “Fiennes is his usual immaculate self, with Alun Armstrong, Allam and Addy all born to play grumbling amateur tenors. The Selfish Giant’s Shaun Thomas, a rakish, tactless lad-about-town and Amara Okereke’s angelic-voiced Salvation Army volunteer are standouts. But best of all is Simon Russell Beale who make a memorable cameo as Elgar. He plays the great British composer as a stick-in-the-mud windbag whose vanity has trumped his artistic instincts. Maybe, you’re left wondering, they should have stuck with Bach after all.”