00:01I often wanted to write about a choral society.
00:05The film's set in 1916 in a fictional village in Yorkshire, Milltown.
00:10Dr. Henry Guthrie is a choral master, a pire master.
00:14The choral society is struggling because a lot of young men are going off and being killed or wounded.
00:20Right boys, ready?
00:22And the choral society finds itself short of singers.
00:25When you read the script, what you get is this wonderful sense of community.
00:33They need to be able to gather communally and express themselves.
00:38It's a shared experience of the joy of music and the importance of music's ability to uplift,
00:46to transcend people's everyday trouble and strife.
00:50Joining up, I feel it's my patriotic duty.
00:53We'll need a new chorus, master.
00:56Ralph Fiennes plays Dr. Guthrie.
00:58Who's brought in to organise the choir, who are thinking they're going to sing Bach's St. Matthew Passion.
01:04But because of the anti-German sentiment, they decide they shouldn't.
01:08Dr. Guthrie.
01:09What?
01:10He's been working in Germany. Treachery.
01:13My character proposes that the choir sing Edward Elgar's dream of Gerontius.
01:19He realises that he can't do a full-blooded dream of Gerontius with this group.
01:24He needs to tailor it down.
01:27Altered it to make meaning of their lives.
01:30A young man appears from the front, who's been through hell of course, with a magically beautiful voice.
01:36You've been dealt some rough cards.
01:41So Guthrie decides to cast him as Drontius.
01:44So sing.
01:45Musical director Tom Brady, who is extremely gifted, he's coached all the actors.
01:51And was handed my folder of sheet music. I actually said to him, I was like, oh, I'm like proper singing.
01:58The amazing Natalie Mobile. She's had the formidable task of walking Rafe through what it means to conduct.
02:05The gesture of music in this film is intrinsically joined up with the people and the stories of these people in this film.
02:15In the end becomes, I think, the heart of the picture, you know.
02:19It's a really beautiful story of people finding something to hold on to in a time of uncertainty.
02:28It's actually almost a contemporary message, isn't it?
02:31It's important that the core of society should be allowed to flourish.
02:35And it is a relationship formed through the performance of music. It's formed through art.
02:40This is the genius of storytelling and great direction and great writing.
02:45It is wonderful music.
02:47It's beautifully observed.
02:49It's about the transformative power of music and the way music can actually make sense of your life.
02:56They've only played a few bars of that and I'm gone.
03:00I think that makes it special. I feel that that is what Nick is rendering that on film.
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