THE CHORAL*** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Day 5

THE CHORAL is an earnest, often twee but ultimately rather moving film about a fictional choir in a Northern town putting on a performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius in the midst of World War One.  Death looms over the entire film. It opens with a young lad delivering telegrams to mothers and wives reporting the death of their loved ones at the Front.  The Choral has to recruit new men to take up the places of those fighting, or worse, killed. The pianist leaves to join up.  We see men carried off to war on one train, and invalids return on the next.  In this context, one might ask about the relevance of a libretto focussed on an old man dying and a fight for his immortal soul.  And so the choirmaster recuts and recasts the oratorio as the story of a young soldier killed in France, with the angel beckoning him to Paradise recast as a young nurse calling him home.

The film is taken at a measured pace that I occasionally found too languorous. It is handsomely directed by Nicholas Hytner but I found the production design rather Farrow and Ball - curated to within an inch of its life - all eggshell blues and taupe.  Similarly, while the film is handsomely acted by an ensemble cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Roger Allum, I often felt that the script didn’t give them enough to do.  I would have loved to have seen the love story between the choirmaster and the pianist developed a little more. That said, there is a rather smashing cameo from Simon Russell Beale as a bloviating Elgar.  And among the younger cast members I was particularly impressed by the young actor playing the lead tenor whose name I cannot find on IMDB.  It’s also worth saying that the music is beautifully done, including a bravura fifteen minute compressed version of the concert by George Fenton.  Truly, to quote the choirmaster Dr Guthrie, “art does come from art”.

The script is by the legendary national treasure Alan Bennett, and features his trademark wry and often deadpan wit.  There are plenty of chuckles.  I was, however, surprised by just how frank this film is about sex. One of the choristers is a prostitute, and unsurprisingly a couple of the young lads going to war are obsessed with losing their virginity before they go.  This side of the film sometimes sits awkwardly with the more “heritage” tone of the rest of the piece, but I think that’s the point. These are just young lads, then as now.  And we sent them off to die.  It’s hard not to get caught up in the emotion of that final scene. 

THE CHORAL has a running time of 113 minutes and is rated R. It played Toronto and London. It opens in the UK on November 7th and in the USA on December 25th.

THE LADY IN THE VAN - Crimbo Binge-watch #1

THE LADY IN THE VAN is the very funny, rather moving true story of an old homeless lady - Mrs Fletcher - who was taken in by the famous writer Alan Bennett.  Maybe "taken in" is too strong.  She lived in a ramshackle van, had no bathing facilities, and sold small items for money.  She parked up her van outside various houses in a street in Camden until Bennett took pity on her and let her live in his driveway and use his lavatory.   What begins as a kind of bizarre fascination turns into an odd sort of friendship, sustained over decades, culminating in an understanding of what drove her to madness, and a play, then film, for the author. 

The result is a film that is - typically Bennett!  Wry in its observations of English class niceties - the tolerance of a homeless woman by middle-class pretentious people who think they are somehow being charitable in their condescension - and yet that odd way into which English people will transform something unpleasant into a national treasure. And let's be clear about how unpleasant Mrs Fletcher's hygiene and habits could be!  

In front of the lens, Alex Jennings is superb as not just one Bennett, but two - as the author turns into his own interlocutor - a fantastic conceit that avoids the dreaded voiceover. Maggie Smith gives Fletcher more than just the Dowager Duchess' acerbic wit but also real pathos. And occasionally there's some provocative stuff about the demands that religion makes of us.  This film is both intelligent and moving - a real delight. 

THE LADY IN THE VAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 104 minutes. It was released in 2015.

THE ZERO THEOREM - LFF 2013 - Day Five

Aaargh! I wanted to love ZERO THEOREM, I really did! And I loved the satirical visual in-jokes, the rambling shambolic wonderfully inventive Terry Gilliam trademark production design. There were individual moments of genius - Tilda Swinton's cyber-psychologist starting to rap her advice when her programme gets buggy - Matt Damon as the evil totalitarian overload "Management" wearing suits that camouflage against his furnishings - singing pizza boxes - oh the list goes on!  But I just found it so hard to grab hold of the movie.  It kept slipping through my fingers.  I just didn't empathise with the protagonist, or get an idea of what the stakes were, or know who I wanted to win, or what winning even was. And without any kind of anchor, the visual tricks became tiresome, after a while.

The movie stars the charismatic Christoph Waltz against type as Qohen Leth - a kind of mad Uncle Fester, shaved and paranoid, living in a ramshackle old church, working for some kind of tyrannical company, waiting delusionally for the phone call that will give him the meaning of life. Into this world comes the fantasy girl Brainley (Melanie Thierry) - a kind of cyber-punk take on the "hooker with a heart of gold" trope - as well as what turns out to be Management's son (Lucas Hedges) - a smart-talking IT genius - both of whom have been sent to help Qohen Leth with his mission.  And what is that mission? To solve the Zero Theorem, proving all life as meaningless. 

That's about as much plot as we get.  What this movie is really about is satire on contemporary society - the paucity of modern relationships in a world of cyber-communication - the trashiness of online sex - the wince-inducingly naff adverts - the  dependence on therapists and pills - the alienation of atomised man. All this amongst visuals that give us a feeling of childlike whimsy and a society disappearing up its own proverbial. If only Richard Ayoade's dystopia in THE DOUBLE had had one percent of the imagination of this film. And if only this film had had one percent of the true emotion that Ayoade found at the heart of his story. Alas, it was not to be. 

THE ZERO THEOREM has a running time of 107 minutes.

THE ZERO THEOREM played Venice and London 2013 and opens in Italy on December 19th and in Russia on January 2nd. 

Random DVD Round-Up 5 - THE BOUNTY HUNTER

Andy Tennant (FOOL'S GOLD, HITCH, SWEET HOME ALABAMA) is a seeming one-man factory in churning out romantic-comedies pinned on an implausible central conceit. In this risible flick, the conceit is that Gerard Butler is a bail bonds-man with a gambling habit, charged to bring his ex-wife (Jennifer Aniston) to jail. She's been had up on a fender-bender charge, but was too busy to turn up to court because she's a hard-nosed investigative journalist. ((rolls eyes)). The resulting "comedy" should play as a screwball caper with two wise-cracking stars wheeling their way through organised crime and driving through America. What actually happens is that the two romantic leads have zero chemistry and the creaky, paper-thin plot can't compensate. The only way to watch this flick is on fast-forward - and if I tell you I watched the whole thing in the "flight-safe" window of a fifty minute AMS-LCY flight, you'll get what I mean.

Additional tags: Sarah Thorp, Oliver Bokelberg, 

THE BOUNTY HUNTER was released in Spring 2010 and is available to rent/buy.

TICKETS - thought-provoking but sterile

TICKETS is an odd sort of film and, sadly, admirable rather than enjoyable. The concept is that three directors who have formidable reputations in making socially and politically aware movies (Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami and Ken Loach) should create a film that focuses on the relationhips between various passengers on an Italian train. The movie is not split into three formal sections but it is possible to detect the shift in which director is handling the story as the focus moves to different sets of characters.

In the first section, an old man sits in a first class compartment musing on his love for his younger secretary. This being Italy, first-class is luxurious, with hot pasta served by suited waiters. Through the glass sliding door, the first-class passengers can see third-class passengers cramped in the corridor – in particular, a family if Albanian illegal immigrants with a young child. When a brusque guard spills the baby’s milk, the first-class passengers look on, but do nothing to help. One of the attendants mops up the milk – clearing up the mess – but that is all. Finally, the old man orders the waitor to bring him some warm milk in a glass and then, under the gaze of the astonished first-class passengers, takes it to the young mother.

I have gone into the detail of the narrative of this segment because it sums up the feel of the rest of the film very nicely. Instead of an over-arching narrative we have little situations, much like in a novella, in which the interaction of people of various social classes and races is highlighted. Moreover, while each segment plays as a nice character study or tragi-comedy of manners, they can also be read as political allegories. In the case of the first segment, we see the inaction of rich Western nations in the face of deprivation in Africa or even New Orleans. They do nothing when the drama is unfolding, but pride themselves of mopping up the mess. In each segment there is some hope – some small gesture of reconciliation that can be made. But the barriers created by the class of ticket you hold are never entirely removed.

As a concept, this film is intelligent and timely, and in its execution it is elegant and thought-provoking. However, I found TICKETS to be rather a sterile viewing experience, and a film that I admired rather than enjoyed.

TICKETS premiered at Berlin 2005 and went on limited release in the UK in December 2005. I do not know of a release date for the US, France, Germany or Austria. It is now available on Region 2 DVD.