My general awareness of the new movie Cyrano was gradual. I read the original play twenty+ years ago, and I think the story itself is fairly well-known. But knowing that a new movie was coming out with actor Peter Dinklage as Cyrano, here as a little person as opposed to a man with a large nose, was enough to get my attention by itself. Then, while waiting to see something else, I saw a trailer that told me that director Joe Wright’s movie was a musical, and now I was even more curious. After watching the movie, I learned it was a stage musical first, adapted to film. I didn’t know that, but it did make a lot of sense. And then, when I got home, I looked up a bit about the movie and learned Dinklage and his co-start Haley Bennett were both reprising their roles from the stage show.
The point is, I didn’t think there was much of a chance I was skipping this one.
I think the story of Cyrano de Bergerac is fairly well-known, and that story follows through here. Cyrano (Dinklage) is a brilliant poet and soldier, very much in love with penniless beauty from his old home town Roxanne (Bennett). Cyrano believes he is far too ugly to ever achieve Roxanne’s love, something the few people that know of his affections scoff at, but he believes it. Thus when Roxanne lays eyes on new guardsman Christian de Neuvillette (Kevin Harrison Jr), she falls for his handsome face. However, Christian is not good with words, and Roxanne seems to require poetry. Cyrano, figuring he can never have Roxanne’s love for himself, writes letters on behalf of the good-natured young man, also in love with Roxanne, but the ideal man for Roxanne, as far as Cyrano believes, is someone with Christian’s looks and Cyrano’s wit.
Of course, there’s a war on, and a shifty duke (a nearly unrecognizable Ben Mendelsohn) has his own designs for Roxanne, and he has it in for Cyrano for a variety of reasons unrelated to Roxanne anyway. Anyone who knows the story of Cyrano de Bergerac probably knows how the rest of this movie goes, but in the event that you do not…well, I am not going to say any more than this.
Now, as I said, I didn’t know this was a stage musical before I saw it, and as far as that goes, I didn’t find the songs particularly impressive at times. They felt, for lack of a better word, basic. Still, Wright stages things well, and Dinklage actually got a better action scene or two in this movie than he did over eight seasons of Game of Thrones. It helps that he has a very expressive face, one that shows Cyrano’s pain well even as he struggles to reconcile his emotions with what he sees as reality. Harrison, for his part, never suggests anything underhanded about Christian, to the point where he is often uncomfortable with hiding who wrote the letters to Roxanne. He doesn’t have the wit for himself, but he is wise enough to know Roxanne isn’t that shallow.
As for Bennett, I have long had an observation, generally meant in jest, that she was the actress a movie would hire when they couldn’t afford Jennifer Lawrence. It wasn’t meant as a slam in any way. I would just see her in various roles in a trailer and do a double take, wondering if that was Jennifer Lawrence in a small role, but it was always her instead. However, knowing she is recreating a stage role and holding her own with Dinklage, and seeing that she has an absolutely lovely singing voice, I can safely say I don’t think I will be thinking of her in that way anymore as she turned in a performance that made her stick out in my mind in ways that she never did in the past. That is especially true when it comes to the singing. Good for her. That said, no one else on the cast is anywhere near as good as she is when the singing starts.
As for the movie itself, it’s largely fine, but somehow seems both small and large at the same time. I have no better way of saying it, but as much as I liked the performances, the songs and the scope never really worked as well for me as I was hoping. The end result is a fine film, even a good one, but not a great one.
Grade: B-
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