Ralph Fiennes leads an anti-war speech

“God Save the King” was never the prettiest or most melodic of national anthems, and its somewhat aggressive tenor came to the fore early in “Chorus.” Upon receiving some good news from the front in the midst of World War I, an English village choir’s spirited and spontaneous rendition of the song disrupts their somewhat shoddy rehearsal of Edward Elgar’s complex, oratorio-haunting “Dream of Gerontius,” prompting the posh choral conductor Dr. Henry Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes) to roll his eyes into the back of his head. “I wish you could sing Elgar with confidence and sing the national anthem,” he muttered. For Guthrie, art is much more than patriotism, and the happy surprise of Nicholas Hytner’s film – despite its ornate English trappings – is that it is largely on its side.

Maybe this is not a surprise. “The Choral” is the first original screenplay in more than 40 years by Alan Bennett, a 91-year-old national treasure whose place in the British cultural firmament has never been neatly defined: an eccentric, atheist, working-class northerner, a staunch royalist who rejected knighthood, and whose politics traveled along a spectrum he once described as “conservative socialism.” Many of those contradictions and conflicts are present in The Choral — some for better, some for worse, but interestingly in all cases — even if Hytner, the director who previously shot Bennett’s scripts for The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and The Lady in the Van, gives the overall package a beguiling sheen of nostalgia To tea and crumpets.

At first glance, the film appears to be a brilliant combination of two trademarks of crowd-pleasing British film: a keep-calm-and-steady portrait of wartime resilience, and an underdog story, like “The Full Monty” with the radio dial set to “Land of Hope and Glory” instead of “You’re Sexy Thing.” Set in 1916, the film is set in the picturesque (and fictional) Yorkshire mill town of Ramsden – the rolling hills and cobblestone streets seemingly safely sheltered from the war raging on the Continent, but for its all-consuming effect on the town’s youth. With each wave of conscription, they leave the city’s quaint train station, bright-eyed and uniformed, only to return bitter and incomplete, if they return at all.

Until his name is named, 17-year-old postman Lofty (Oliver Briscombe) spends his days delivering letters of tragedy to newly bereaved women around Ramsden, though his feisty friend Ellis (Taylor Utley) looks on the bright side: “Grief, it’s an opportunity,” he says cheerfully. There is also an opportunity for boys in the village choir, which has been sorely deprived of male voices – and soon the young choirmaster becomes one too. Enter Guthrie, a suave and brilliant bandleader who had previously enjoyed some fame, although he was often rejected by the locals for a variety of reasons, not least the fact that he had spent several years living and studying in Germany. His unapologetic atheism doesn’t help. And there are no more “distinctive characteristics” that no one specifically wants to name. “Let’s just say I’m the ultimate family man,” says stoic board member Duxbury (Roger Allam). And leave it at that.

Guthrie’s appeal remains somewhat hidden throughout Bennett’s script, though Fiennes plays him with a graceful, understated air of melancholy, his mourning turning inward in search of loved ones and lovers he can never name. There are unanswered overtures from the choir’s pianist Horner (Robert Eames), a vulnerable young man whose conscientious objector makes him an odd colleague. But “The Choral” is more concerned with the romantic lives of its younger characters, as Ellis, Lofty, and their fellow teenage soldiers desperately seek to lose their virginity before they lose their lives. Among those in their sights are Mary (Amara Okereke), a golden-voiced Salvation Army officer who has never even opened a button, and Bella (Emily Fearn), a braver type who anxiously awaits the return of her wounded boyfriend Clyde (Jacob Dudman, the band’s heartbreaking star), even though she may not be equipped to care for his trauma.

Bennett’s screenplay shifts inconsistently between generations, highlighting certain points of view before suddenly receding, though the film is never less than transformative – with Guthrie’s ambitious plan to showcase Elgar’s sublime work (with an off-key chorus and a three-person orchestra) lending the proceedings a satisfying narrative momentum. If it doesn’t culminate in the artistic triumph you might expect, there’s a more subtle and honest moral here in favor of artistic ambition, integrity and compromise all at once, courtesy of a funny, arrogant cameo from Simon Russell Beal as Elgar himself.

But the film is best when it quietly bucks our expectations of genteel British spectacle, whether it’s sharing Guthrie’s dry indignation at demonstrations of national pride, or eschewing genteel romanticism in its one unexpected sex scene: an unsentimental, reluctant handjob on the moors, subtly filmed but gently illustrating the bodies and spirits broken by war and English reserve. There are ugly open wounds in “The Choral,” even if they are carefully and exquisitely dressed up by Mike Ealy’s crisp, wheaty lenses, George Fenton’s sumptuous score, and Jenny Bevan’s perfectly pressed costumes. At its best, Bennett’s writing cuts through the gauze.