Film review: ‘The Choral’

‘The Choral’

Directed by Nicholas Hytner (R)

★★

The new period screen drama starring Ralph Fiennes is at its best “when it chafes quietly against our expectations of gentle British comfort viewing,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. In a small Yorkshire mill town, young men are shipping off to World War I’s battlefields and returning broken “if at all” when an outsider played by Fiennes is hired as the local church’s new choirmaster. But while director Nicholas Hytner bathes the proceedings...