What lies beneath

The Choral
DIRECTOR: NICHOLAS HYTNER

Dragonfly
DIRECTOR: PAUL ANDREW WILLIAMS

Collaborations between Alan Bennett and Nicholas Hytner are almost a genre in themselves, and their latest film, The Choral, fulfils all the usual expectations. There is a cast of much-loved British actors; there are good jokes about class snobbery, sexual hypocrisy and naively complacent prejudice; and a familiar overarching theme concerning the liberating importance of art. However, like Elgar’s Gerontius, the performance of whose dream of death, judgement and salvation provides the spine of the story, this is an old man’s song.

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