Joe Wright has a genius for taking the stories we know all too well and making them feel like a delightful new discovery. Seek no further than his take on ANNA KARENINA (interview here), which, pace fans of Garbo and Leigh, is my favorite adaptation of Tolstoy’s classic. Is it absolutely true to the source material? Yes and no. Liberties in text were taken, but the spirit shows absolute fidelity to the novel. And so it is with Wright’s version of CYRANO, taken from the musical by co-screenwriter Erica Schmidt, in turn based on the Edmond Rostand’s original. It is exhilarating in the scope of pure romance, the messy kind where the all too human failings if its protagonists thwart the course of true love.
There is a radical shift here, in that Cyrano, the swaggering soldier/poet/playwright does not suffer the indignities heaped upon him by a superficial world that makes sport of his prodigiously large proboscis. In this telling, starring Peter Dinklage, it is Cyrano’s stature that prevents the otherwise indomitable man from declaring his love for lifelong friend Roxane (Haley Bennett). He fears rejection by her, the which would prevent him from ever seeing her again, a fate worse than death for him. He also frets over the judgement of a world that will not accept a statuesque woman paired off with a little person. He uses the word midget.
Yet Cyrano lives in a kind of hope, though he opines that hope is hell. Thus, when Roxanne begs a private meeting with him after he has had a brush with death during a duel, he hopes it is to confess her love for him. It makes the shock of her confession of love for another even more painful. He is Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr), an Adonis of a man whom she has only glimpsed from afar, but it was enough for the love-at-first-sight experience for which she has pined. Perhap for too long, as her faithful nurse (Monica Dolan) reminds her of her quickly passing youth, and their precarious financial situation. Christian, alas, is a poor soldier, while Roxanne’s declared suitor, the Duc de Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn) is not just rich, if unappealing, but he is also powerful and losing patience as Roxanne strings him along.
Roxanne makes Cyrano promise to look after Christian as he reports for duty in Cyrano’s regiment even before if she knows if her feelings are requited. The look of anguish on Cyrano’s face is plain despite the smile, or at least it would be if Roxanne were not so wrapped up in the soft pink clouds of romance. Indeed, Cyrano is the first to admit Roxanne’s failings, which include vanity and a certain self-centeredness, It only serves to prove his genuine love for her, the kind of love that accepts, ahem, shortcomings in the object of desire. It also serves that Cyrano’s love does not include the faith that Roxanne, a woman of formidable intellectual capacity, would be capable of the same maturity. And herein lies the tragedy.
Cyrano is better than his word. Learning that Christian is just as smitten with Roxanne as she with him, they devise a plan wherein Cyrano will write extravagant, elegant prose dripping with romance to which Christian, whose powers of expression are limited to doe-eyed longing, will affix his name. There are close calls as Christina and Roxanne meet, but love will out, and with sadness as infinite as his love for Roxanne, Cyrano steps aside to let hormones take their course,
That Peter Dinklage was not nominated for an Oscar for this performance is a travesty of justice. This is a performance where swagger and insecurity apotheosize into a sublime expression of love. Cynicism and despair become a determined altruism whose purity does not lessen the sting of being passed over.
In a film that worships wit and sensual prose, Wright has paired the exalted language with visuals that enhance them on a level both cerebral and earthy. Roxanne reading the words Cyrano has written as Christian leave little doubt about how ethereal passions are stirred as well as earthy ones. A baker’s longing for a way to describe his feelings for his own beloved find unexpected expression as Cyrano discovers the steamy side of breadmaking with choreography by the baker’s workers that will never let you see a loaf of bread in quite the same way,
The songs are haunting, echoing in each character’s mouth with a bittersweet longing, and proving that when mere prose will not serve, singing will get the idea across. The same can be said for the dancing, which finds soldiers spinning to Christian’s burst of joy at learning that Roxanne requites his feelings. It’s the very counter-intuitiveness that makes it so effective. A juxtaposition that makes the synapses sing along with the chorus. That and the way the flowing sleeves billow in unison.
It also allows de Guiche a moment of humanity. He doesn’t dance, but the song he sings when he’s lost patience at last with Roxanne gives him emotional shading as does Mendelsohn’s performance as a whole, unpacking a nobleman unused to being denied anything struck with love for someone with a mind of her own.
Unfolding in gorgeous candlelight glittering with gold, glowing Mediterranean sun highlighting diffused light, and stark scenes of battle, CYRANO is an exhilarating experience. Literate and sentimental without lowering itself to mere mawkishness, it is a rapturous experience.
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