movie review of cyrano

Last month, Peter Dinklage was a guest on Marc Maron’s podcast, and shared his thoughts on the upcoming Disney live-action remake of “ Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs “: “You’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that [expletive] backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together. Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.” Twitter reacted badly, as Twitter is wont to do. People were lecturing him about how dwarfs were common in Germany mythology (you can’t make this stuff up), people were telling him it’s a “fairytale,” “it’s not that deep,” stop overthinking it, calm down. 

I thought his criticisms were perfectly valid. His comments highlighted the unique nature of his career. “Groundbreaking” doesn’t even cover it. He won four Emmys for his performance as Tyrion Lannister in “Game of Thrones,” but that’s just the beginning in terms of accolades. Dinklage “advances the cause” even further in his performance as Cyrano de Bergerac in “Cyrano,” the new musical adaptation of Edmond Rostand ’s 19th-century play, directed by Joe Wright , and it feels a little bit like casting as destiny. It makes so much sense!

In Rostand’s play, Cyrano (based loosely on a real person) has many gifts. He is a soldier. He is brave. But there’s one problem. He has a gigantic nose, and has internalized the world’s opinion that he is ugly. He loves the beautiful Roxanne but knows he can never have her. In this adaptation, written by Erica Schmidt (Dinklage’s wife), it is Cyrano’s stature that holds him back from love and intimacy, not his nose, and the transfer really works, giving the melodramatic well-known story an undeniable base of reality. Normally, actors wear prosthetic noses when they play the role. The audience knows it’s not a real nose, and everyone buys the convention. Remove the convention, though, remove that layer of artifice, and all kinds of other things are possible.

As Cyrano, Dinklage is impulsive and bold, openly emotional, and fearlessly dramatic in his gestures and his voice. The language is poetic and heightened, and he shows great skill in filling it, expressing it. Cyrano and Roxanne (a radiant Haley Bennett ) are childhood friends, and their closeness and intimacy breaks the lovelorn Cyrano’s heart all the more. Roxanne confides in him. She is being “courted” by a slimy Duke ( Ben Mendelsohn , sporting a cape and a beauty spot), but she has fallen in love-at-first-sight with a young recruit in Cyrano’s regiment, the handsome Christian ( Kelvin Harrison Jr.). Christian loves Roxanne too but is tongue-tied in her presence. He begs Cyrano to write love letters to Roxanne on his behalf. Cyrano agrees, and Roxanne is swept away by Christian’s passionate and poetic eloquence. We all know this situation cannot go on forever.

Most audiences are familiar with the bare bones of the story, since the play is such a favorite in repertory companies, as well as the many film adaptations. The most well-known version is probably Steve Martin’s “ Roxanne ,” a whimsical riff on the original (with all the stark tragedy removed). José Ferrer’s performance in the 1950 film is well worth seeking out, as is Gerard Depardieu’s 1990 version. Everyone brings something different to the role. What’s so much fun about Dinklage’s performance is how it’s in many ways a throwback. At one point, he single-handedly defeats ten men with his dazzling swordsmanship. The men come at him from every side, dropping down on him from above, and he flips and jumps and slashes, dispatching them all. It’s a thrilling sequence, calling to mind Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and all the great movie swashbucklers of days gone by. And yet at the same time, there’s something wholly modern about what he brings. This is an extremely personal performance, and he is at times truly heartbreaking.

It should be noted that this adaptation started off as a 2019 off-Broadway production, starring Dinklage (and directed by Schmidt). The score was composed by twin brothers Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner (of the band The National), with lyrics by National frontman Matt Berninger and Carin Besser. The songs aren’t stereotypically “catchy,” either in a Broadway way, or a pop-anthem way. They’re mostly used as interior soliloquies expressing the intense emotions of unrequited love, passion, desolation. 

Joe Wright’s handling of these numbers—in collaboration with cinematographer Seamus McGarvey —is very interesting. There is choreography, in a sense, but it’s woven into the fabric of the scene: there’s a beautiful moment where rows and rows of soldiers fence one another in rhythmic coordination, lunging and thrusting out onto the parapets above the sea; or bakers kneading dough in time with the music, the dances erupting out from everyday activities. It’s very eye-catching and intricate, fun to watch. There are lags at times, and Christian’s fumbling and bumbling could have been given much more screen time, for the comedic element alone. It’s not driven home just how much Christian cannot talk  to save his life.

The montage sequence of the letter-writing is the real standout. It’s a passionate three-way dance of longing, the letters flying back and forth, Cyrano lost in composing the letters, Roxane lost in reading them. The letters flutter through the air—in her room, around her bed, falling down onto her body, drifting down onto the streets—a rapt metaphor of what it feels like to read a love letter. The person’s voice is in your head. It’s transportive. It’s erotic.

The tragedy in Cyrano comes from people who choose half-truths over the full truth, who refuse to risk emotional exposure. These lies create loneliness. This is the human condition, particularly when love comes into play. What if when he gets to know me, he doesn’t like me? What if she sees the real me and doesn’t like what she sees? People wear masks. People pose. And in so doing they practically guarantee their continued isolation.

This is the heart of Cyrano de Bergerac . This is why the play has been in constant rotation ever since it premiered in 1897. It’s not just a farcical story about a guy with a big nose who gets roped into writing love letters to the woman he can’t have. It’s an ethical and moral tale, with a strong warning against letting fear of rejection, or fear of being humiliated, stop you from speaking your truth, from living in truth. Cyrano is fearless in a duel, but when facing the woman he loves, he quakes. “Cyrano” gets the big things right, and Dinklage embodies it all.

Now playing in theaters.

Sheila O'Malley

Sheila O’Malley received a BFA in Theatre from the University of Rhode Island and a Master’s in Acting from the Actors Studio MFA Program. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Peter Dinklage as Cyrano de Bergerac
• Haley Bennett as Roxanne
• Ben Mendelsohn as De Guiche
• Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Christian
• Monica Dolan as Marie
• Aaron Dessner
• Bryce Dessner

Writer (play)

• Edmond Rostand
• Erica Schmidt

Cinematographer

• Seamus McGarvey
• Valerio Bonelli

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'Cyrano' infuses an oft-told tale with disarming sincerity and operatic passion

Justin Chang

Haley Bennett stars as Roxanne in Joe Wright's Cyrano . Peter Mountain/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures Inc. hide caption

Haley Bennett stars as Roxanne in Joe Wright's Cyrano .

A lot of great actors have played Cyrano de Bergerac over the years, including José Ferrer, Christopher Plummer , Gérard Depardieu , Kevin Kline and Steve Martin , if you count — and why not? — the 1987 modern-day comedy Roxanne .

The latest to join their distinguished company is Peter Dinklage, and he's the rare actor not to wear a fake nose for the role. Here, it's not a big schnoz but rather Cyrano's diminutive stature that makes him think he's unworthy of Roxanne, the woman he loves, played by Haley Bennett.

That's not the only major departure from Edmond Rostand's tragicomic 1897 play. This solid and sometimes enchanting movie, simply titled Cyrano , was adapted by Erica Schmidt from her 2019 stage musical, with a score and songs by members of the band The National . Their sweet, somber melodies bring a decidedly modern edge to the story, which takes place sometime between the 17th and 18th centuries. While Cyrano de Bergerac usually unfolds in Paris, the movie, shot mostly in Sicily, doesn't specify an exact location.

Apart from those changes, it's the same story. Cyrano, a respected soldier in the king's army, is renowned and feared for his superb swordsmanship and his scathing wit, both of which have made him powerful enemies like Count de Guiche, played by a scowling Ben Mendelsohn .

How the many pairs behind 'Cyrano' made music for the movie's lovelorn couples

Cyrano is also deeply in love with Roxanne, a longtime friend who admires his confrontational spirit and his way with words. But Roxanne has fallen for Christian, a dashing young soldier — played by a very good Kelvin Harrison Jr. — who's just joined Cyrano's regiment. Cyrano takes on the role of a go-between and even goes so far as to write impossibly eloquent love letters to Roxanne, passing them off as Christian's.

At the climax of this farcical romantic triangle, Roxanne stands at her bedroom window while the hopelessly inarticulate Christian tries to woo her, with some much-needed prodding from Cyrano, lurking in the shadows. At a certain point, Cyrano takes over, and he gives full voice to his passionate feelings in a lovely duet between him and a still-unsuspecting Roxanne.

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Fun fact: Dinklage and screenwriter Schmidt are a couple, as are Bennett and the film's director, Joe Wright. Think of it as a romantic behind-the-scenes footnote to a movie that's unabashedly romantic in spirit. Wright's filmmaking has a pleasing old-fashioned sumptuousness, courtesy of production designer Sarah Greenwood and costume designers Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran, who are Oscar-nominated for their dazzling work here.

As he did in past films like Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina , Wright controls the camera with fluid grace, letting us see the actors and dancers moving through space with none of the busy cutting you get in so many contemporary movie musicals. Bennett is a trained singer, and she delivers the movie's strongest musical performance; her Roxanne really comes to emotional life when she's called on to sing.

Dinklage has musical experience, too — he was the frontman of a '90s punk band called Whizzy — and he expresses Cyrano's every longing with a deep, soulful baritone. He's an inspired choice for the role: Like Tyrion Lannister, whom Dinklage played to perfection on Game of Thrones , Cyrano is always the smartest person in the room, easy to underestimate but hard to defeat in a battle of wits or weapons.

But Dinklage shows you the deep ache at Cyrano's core, and makes you feel the sting of his unrequited love. Some purists may miss that big nose, but there's something about the lack of prosthetic enhancements that makes Dinklage's performance all the more poignant: What you see onscreen is all him, nothing more and nothing less.

That disarming sincerity applies to the movie as a whole. It's not always the most graceful retelling of this oft-told tale, but it's hard not to admire Wright's conviction and sometimes his crazy audacity. Only a truly committed director would have opted to shoot a climactic battle scene at 16,000 feet above sea level on the side of Mount Etna , a live volcano. It's a showy flourish, for sure — but also a fitting one for a story of such grand, operatic passion.

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Uneven yet ultimately hard to resist, Joe Wright's Cyrano puts a well-acted musical spin on the oft-adapted classic tale.

Well acted and beautifully filmed, this version of the classic story is an unusual but enjoyable musical -- and Peter Dinklage is a Cyrano for the ages.

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‘Cyrano’ Review: Who Wrote the Book of Love?

Peter Dinklage wields pen and sword in a musical adaptation of the durable French romance.

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By A.O. Scott

Cyrano de Bergerac is a lover and a fighter, but when we first meet him he is indulging in a brutal bit of theater criticism. Played with grace and gusto by Peter Dinklage, Cyrano emerges from a standing-room-only crowd to berate a pompous actor and drive him from the stage. With cutting rhymes and a sharp sword, he defends dramatic truth against the woeful thespian’s powdered preening. The audience, which had paid to see Cyrano’s victim, nonetheless mostly applauds his humiliation. The few who object are marked as fools, phonies or outright villains.

Artifice mobilized in defense of authenticity. It’s a paradox as old as art, and one that “Cyrano,” a new screen musical based on Edmond Rostand’s French-class chestnut, embraces with a risky ardor. Directed by Joe Wright, with songs by members of the National (Bryce and Aaron Dessner wrote the music, with lyrics by Matt Berninger and Carin Besser) and a script by Erica Schmidt, this version wears its heart on its ruffled sleeve, pursuing its lush, breathless vision of romance with more sincerity than coherence.

The original Cyrano, first performed in 1897, was an artful throwback to the poetic dramas of the 17th century, written in Alexandrine couplets and infused with lofty, archaic notions of love and honor. In the decades since, the story has become familiar through countless variations and adaptations. Cyrano, a soldier ashamed of his large, misshapen nose, is in love with Roxanne, who is smitten with a callow cutie named Christian. Cyrano uses his literary talents to woo Roxanne in Christian’s name. Each man becomes the other’s proxy. “I will make you eloquent, and you will make me handsome,” Cyrano says.

The resulting confusion produces both comedy — a tangle of crossed signals and mistaken identities — and tragedy. Some versions soften or eliminate the tragedy, like Fred Schepisi’s sweet “Roxanne” (1987), starring Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah, and the recent Netflix teen charmer “The Half of It.” Wright and Schmidt’s “Cyrano,” which originated onstage in 2019 , charges in the other direction, telegraphing its heartache in lyrics and building toward an operatic, death-haunted end.

Along the way, it supplies some moments of fun, mostly thanks to Dinklage and Ben Mendelsohn as his conniving, predatory nemesis, the Duke De Guiche. He too is smitten with Roxanne (Haley Bennett), and as a high-ranking military officer holds the fates of Cyrano and Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) in his hands. Mendelsohn excels at playing silky, sadistic bad guys like this, and he offers himself as a perfect foil to Dinklage, whose Cyrano is acerbic, cantankerous and openhearted.

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‘Cyrano’ Review: A Dashing Peter Dinklage Offers a Fresh Spin on a Romantic Classic

Screenwriter Erica Schmidt knows Cyrano’s nose ought not be his defining feature, reinventing Edmond Rostand's play to suit her husband's "unique physique" and exceptional talent.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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English audiences have long been partial to Romeo and Juliet, but in this critic’s outside-the-box opinion, Edmond Rostand’s “ Cyrano de Bergerac” is the more romantic play. For starters, its tragedy hinges not on teenage impatience and suicide but deep, long-unrequited affection. Convinced that his physical appearance makes him unworthy of his beloved Roxanne, the chivalrous Cyrano dares not express his ardor directly, ultimately taking his secret to the grave. And yet, Shakespeare’s tale of star-crossed lovers is told and retold infinitely more often than Rostand’s.

On those occasions when “Cyrano de Bergerac” is performed in English, it’s often stripped of its verse or played for laughter and farce (à la 1987’s “Roxanne”), whereas Joe Wright ’s splendid new adaptation presents “Cyrano” as 21st-century MGM musical. By enlisting Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the National to compose the songs — lovely, wistful pop ballads for which Matt Berninger and Carin Besser supplied the lyrics — “Cyrano” restores the show’s sense of poetry. At the same time, Wright, back on form and evidently reinvigorated by the pandemic, once again displays the kind of radical creativity that made early-career stunners “Pride and Prejudice” and “Atonement” so electrifying in their time.

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With its swooping cameras and beyond-dazzling production design, Wright’s style is more alive than ever, giving new meaning to the word “panache.” But even before the helmer came aboard, writer Erica Schmidt had an epiphany: that she might reimagine Cyrano as a dwarf, and that there was no actor more suited than her husband, Peter Dinklage , to play the title role (which he did, in an Off Broadway staging that she directed). Hollywood may have been slow to recognize it, but Dinklage truly merits leading-man status, and while his singing voice leaves something to be desired, Schmidt’s bespoke script plays to many of the star’s unique strengths — it’s a love letter the likes of which Rostand would no doubt approve.

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So, with all due respect to the Bard, we might well ask: What’s in a nose? Cyrano, defined by any other feature, might smell as well. Here, Dinklage’s diminutive stature serves the same purpose the character’s oversize schnoz originally did, lending Cyrano an outsider quality that he must overcompensate for in personality (this was much as Gérard Depardieu played it in Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s definitive screen version). Our hero has been called “freak” so often that the insult has lost its sting, and Cyrano’s swordsmanship and wit are such that any rejoinder is sure to prove more cutting — as the movie demonstrates in its dynamic retelling of the opening theater scene, wherein Cyrano makes his flamboyant entrance. He interrupts the actor mid-monologue, then proceeds to upstage him with a rap battle-cum-duel, showcasing talents Dinklage seldom gets to display on-screen.

As Cyrano’s trusted friend Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin) is quick to recognize, this foolish show has all been for the benefit of one person: Roxanne ( Haley Bennett ), who attends with the powerful yet off-putting Duke de Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), restyled here as the kind of rival we might expect to find in a Disney fairy tale. There’s good reason for this change, which allows Schmidt to better define Roxanne’s character from the outset: “I’m nobody’s pet, no one’s wife, no one’s woman,” she asserts early on. Granted the film’s first song, “Someone to Say,” Roxanne’s more than just the abstract object of Cyrano’s affection but an independent woman who knows what she wants — or at least, she thinks she does, when she falls for one of Cyrano’s new recruits, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).

But Cyrano knows Roxanne’s heart perhaps better than she does, and while his breaks when she tells him of her feelings for Christian, he nevertheless promises to protect the young recruit. Cyrano also realizes that without his help, the inarticulate soldier stands no chance of wooing Roxanne, and so he offers to ghostwrite the love letters she expects. The bargain, as Cyrano sees it: “I will make you eloquent, while you make me handsome.” And so begins the greatest courtship the stage has ever known, with Christian reprising the earlier “Someone to Say” number, this time from his perspective.

The plot of “Cyrano de Bergerac” is well-known enough to spare recounting what follows, except to point out that Wright — whom I consider one of the medium’s most visionary craftsmen — has outdone himself in devising original, cinematically innovative ways to stage the film. There’s always been something a bit baroque about Wright’s style: an ornate and somewhat ostentatious more-is-more approach in which costumes, sets and whatever elaborate choreography the camera might be doing all contribute to the overall pleasure we derive from watching it. In “Anna Karenina,” it all became too distracting. By the time of “Pan,” Wright had gone off the deep end. But now he’s recovered, and he wasn’t about to let COVID stand in his way.

Shifting the setting to the island of Sicily, where he could create a responsible bubble within which to execute his epic vision, Wright embellished the natural production design of the available locations (including Mount Etna for the front-line battle scenes). Cyrano and company may have been real-life characters, but even Rostand (famously meticulous about the historical specifics) took considerable license. Here they serve as archetypes as Wright updates the 17th-century aspects to suit his aesthetic, damning the gentry with ribbons, frills and powdered faces while giving Bennett a more iconic modern look as Roxanne.

The son of puppeteers, Wright instinctively understands how to use the proscenium yet never confining himself to conventional frames. At the end of Act 1, when Cyrano is cornered by a mob of thugs, he orchestrates the ensuing fight scene in a single shot, as Dinklage handily dispatches 10 adversaries. Later, when the character assumes his letter-writing duties, Wright ingeniously layers shots of Roxanne and her two suitors to convey the complexity of this love triangle. And most importantly, in the famous balcony scene — the moment when Rostand most clearly surpasses “Romeo and Juliet” — the movie cleverly devises a way for its smitten hero to address Roxanne directly. Brilliant though Schmidt’s script may be, Cyrano would be the first to admit, “Words can only get me so far.” Wright’s direction does the rest.

Reviewed at Telluride Film Festival, Sept. 3, 2021. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 123 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures presentation, in association with Bron Creative, of a Working Title production. Producers: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Guy Heeley. Executive producers: Aaron L. Gilbert, Jason Cloth, Matt Berninger, Carin Besser, Aaron Dessner, Bryce Dessner, Erica Schmidt, Sarah-Jane Robinson, Sheeraz Shah, Lucas Webb. Co-producer: Cass Marks.
• Crew: Director: Joe Wright. Screenplay: Erica Schmidt, based on the stage musical she adapted and directed from “Cyrano de Bergerac” by Edmond Rostand. Editor: Valerio Bonelli. Music: Aaron Dessner & Bryce Dessner; lyrics: Matt Berninger & Carin Besser.
• With: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Dolan.

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Cyrano Is Stunning

Cyrano is, technically speaking, Joe Wright’s first musical film, but you could say he’s been making musicals his entire career. Think back to the tribal-ritual-style dances of Pride and Prejudice ; to the tireless, techno-inflected action scenes of Hanna ; to the grand, balletic gestures and click-clack tempos of Anna Karenina . Even his Churchill-at-war drama The Darkest Hour has a ferocious, developing rhythm to it; the much-discussed scene in which Gary Oldman’s Winston Churchill finds himself chatting up ordinary citizens on the London Underground is shot and cut like a show-stopping musical number, just without any singing.

And so, as Cyrano begins, you sense a director fully in his element, able to weave in and out of bursts of song and snatches of dancerly movement without ever fully disappearing into the realm of the unreal. The movie sings even when nobody’s singing: Characters speak as if guided by internal meters, and they move with brisk, purposeful precision. As a result, when they do burst into song and dance, it feels organic and natural, like everything’s just tipped one slight degree into the fantastical. Cyrano is a delicate dream of a movie, the kind of film that feels like you might have merely imagined it — light on the surface but long on subconscious impact.

This is, of course, an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac , but the central conceit comes from Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical Cyrano , written for her husband, Peter Dinklage. As the title character, Dinklage does not don the traditional huge fake nose; Cyrano’s inability to accept himself as an object of romantic love comes from his stature. It’s a simple but startling change — without that comical, surreal grace note of the nose, Cyrano immediately becomes a rawer, more relatable figure.

That goes perfectly with the picture’s practically anti-Broadway soundtrack of love songs by the National, with their galloping rhythms and breathless lyrics and unfiltered emotions. Cyrano is one of the most romantic movies ever made, but it’s not quite a traditional love story in that nobody really finds true love in it. It’s all evasion, heartache, yearning. This is the romance of hidden thoughts and desires, of urges barely spoken (but often unabashedly sung), of a sweet pain we all secretly remember. It’ll take you right back to high school and college and all those other places where you had your heart shattered into a million pieces.

For Dinklage, losing the nose also accomplishes something more practical. He might be one of the most purely expressive actors of his generation, and his eyes and mouth and facial muscles do so much more without a giant phony proboscis to navigate around. In one early scene, Cyrano’s beloved Roxanne (Haley Bennett) coyly confides to him about someone she’s fallen for. The moment comes straight out of Rostand, and it’s always been one of the work’s high points. But the range of emotions Dinklage runs through in just a few seconds is bewildering. Cyrano’s face goes from cautious enthusiasm to giddy delight to astonishing heartbreak, as he briefly believes Roxanne is talking about him.

But no, she’s talking about Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a handsome new arrival in town and a fellow guardsman in Cyrano’s regiment. Roxanne falls for him the moment she spies him across a crowded theater, and he for her. Rostand’s Christian was rather dim, and the character has been a memorably comic one over the years. (The great ’80s hunk Rick Rossovich had a grand old time playing him in the modern-day adaptation Roxanne, alongside Steve Martin.) In Schmidt and Wright’s version, Christian is beautiful, fresh-faced, kind — but hopelessly inarticulate when it comes to flowery prose and wooing. Together, he and Cyrano make a compelling but unlikely pair: the poet and the soldier, the cynic and the innocent.

But this tale is not one of mere duplicity, of an embittered romantic writing letters to the unattainable beauty he secretly loves on behalf of a trusting hunk. Christian and Cyrano complete each other, and Roxanne essentially, tragically, wants them both. And Wright goes there. In one of the film’s several high points (during the song “Every Letter”) Cyrano-slash-Christian’s messages become sensuous objects, vessels for a spiritual threesome among the central characters, as Roxanne gently rubs the pieces of paper all over her body. The camera even makes sure to focus on the liquid qualities of ink on paper. Prurient, perhaps, but also just an incredibly seductive piece of cinema. The film woos us the way the two men try to woo Roxanne.

There’s an unabashed freedom to Cyrano that’s breathtaking, a fearlessness in the face of love — in contrast, perhaps, to the main hero’s submerged longings. It doesn’t stop there, however. Love in all its forms eventually comes into play. A climactic battle, shot on the side of a volcano, is prefaced by a devastating song (“Heaven Is Wherever I Fall”) in which various doomed soldiers write letters home to their loved ones — to a wife, a parent, an unrequited paramour. It’s a rather stunning emotional turn for the film to take, but in retrospect, it’s also a beautiful one. Because Cyrano , in the end, gives us an experience that goes from the carnal to the spiritual, suggesting that when we love somebody, whoever it might be and whoever we might be and whatever the nature of our love, we become a part of something greater. I can think of no idea more essential.

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Cyrano review: Peter Dinklage recasts a classic as a sumptuous Mediterranean musical

The nose is not the thing in 'Atonement' director Joe Wright's Sicily-set reimagining.

Some people got deep into bread or knitting during the pandemic; director Joe Wright ( Darkest Hour , Atonement ) went to Sicily and made a musical out of one of classic literature's most indelible heroes. He is not, of course, the first filmmaker to put Cyrano de Bergerac on screen: Dozens of movies and stage musicals precede him, a showcase for stars like Christopher Plummer , Gérard Depardieu, and even Steve Martin (who played the role as a small-town fire chief with a Rhode Island-size nose in the 1987 romantic-comedy update Roxanne ).

Here, the physical trait that sends Cyrano ( Peter Dinklage ) into the shadows despite his evident intelligence and bravery is his stature; how dare he expect to earn the hand of the land's greatest beauty ( Hillbilly Elegy 's Haley Bennett ), when his own hardly reaches her clavicle? In public life, he's a fearless swashbuckler and raconteur, a noted swordsman whose pitiless wit cuts nearly as sharp as his blade. In private, he pines for the lovely Roxanne, whose relative poverty forces her to accept the attentions of a predatory nobleman, De Guiche (a preening Ben Mendelsohn , who happily eats parts like these for breakfast).

But Cyrano isn't the only one who's smitten; a young soldier named Christian ( Waves ' Kelvin Harrison Jr. ) has the same girl in his sights, though he lacks the verbal skills, or at least the confidence, to woo her. And so the pair combine forces to create a sort of supersuitor: Christian's flawless face, Cyrano's pretty words. ( South Side 's Bashir Salahuddin, as the loyal but wary Le Bret, is the only other one who really knows the extent of his friend's feelings and the danger he's courting with his subterfuge.)

Wright has a way of creating whole sumptuous self-contained worlds in projects like Anna Karenina and even the recent, regrettable The Woman in the Window , and Cyrano betrays none of COVID-era filmmaking's now-familiar limitations. His expansive colorblind casting and sun-drenched exteriors bring new richness to Erica Schmidt's 2018 theater piece (she also penned the script) — almost every shot is framed like a Renaissance painting, and the songs, by members of indie-rock stalwarts the National, have an earnest, orchestral tunefulness.

The musical bits are worn lightly, less an anchor for the film than a sort of warm filigree traced on top. And the main cast mostly treats them that way, forgoing big gestures and jazz-hands theatricality for a more easy kind of naturalism that serves the modesty of the melodies well. (Of them all, Bennett has the closest thing to a real performer's voice, supple and intimate.) What the movie never quite sells is its central love story; it must be the romance of the century, because the characters can't stop saying (or singing) so, but the pair's supposedly crucial bond feels more like sweet friendship forced to conform to the worn contours of a fairy tale. The real draw is Dinklage: with his mournful eyes and crooked smile, he's the tender, towering soul of Cyrano . B+

After a one-week qualifying run in New York and L.A. beginning Dec. 17, Cyrano arrives in limited release on Jan. 28 and goes wider in early Februrary.

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Review: Peter Dinklage earns your love in the snazzy (but not schnozzy) musical ‘Cyrano’

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Since “Cyrano de Bergerac” has always been about the superficial nature of appearances, there’s something fitting about the exterior renovations that have given rise to Joe Wright’s sweet, earnest and sometimes enchanting new “Cyrano.” For starters, the movie is a full-blown musical: Its roots lie not only in Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play of romantic misdirection but also in a stage show that was written and directed by Erica Schmidt (who adapted the screenplay herself) and features songs and score by members of the rock band the National. And Peter Dinklage, who starred in that musical’s 2019 off-Broadway production, superbly reprises his role here, giving us a Cyrano who is widely mocked not for an oversize proboscis but rather for a diminutive physique. The insults flung his way may be different, but his sense of social rejection — and his fear that he isn’t fit to love — cuts just as deep.

Maybe it even cuts a little deeper. Nearly every screen actor who has taken on Cyrano de Bergerac — among them José Ferrer (an Oscar winner for his 1950 performance), Christopher Plummer, Gérard Depardieu , Kevin Kline and Steve Martin, if you count “Roxanne” (and why wouldn’t you?) — has donned a fake nose for the occasion, availing himself of prosthetic putty, special effects or some ingenious confection of both. Dinklage comes to the screen with no such enhancements and is all the more poignant for it: What we see onscreen is all him. But it’s not just the lack of artificial adornment that makes his Cyrano feel like such an authentic, lived-in creation. It’s also the silver-tongued wit, the steel-trap mind, the sense that whatever this Cyrano may lack in physical stature he more than makes up for in intellectual acuity.

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Put it another way: Whoever realized that Cyrano de Bergerac could be reconceived as a less frisky, more sober Tyrion Lannister was clearly on to something. “Cyrano,” sailing into theaters this week with a PG-13 rating, is decidedly not “Game of Thrones”; no White Walkers are in evidence (though Ben Mendelsohn’s scowling, heavily powdered Count de Guiche comes close), and apart from an early duel between Cyrano and a high-society sneerer (Joshua James), the bloodshed is kept to a tasteful minimum. But Cyrano has more in common with Tyrion than a few consonants and vowels. In both cases, the threat of pariahdom has forced a Dinklage character to become the smartest man in the room, deadly with a quip and deadlier still with a blade, as we see when Cyrano deftly fends off a nighttime ambush by one of his many powerful enemies.

In these moments, this “Cyrano” duly swashes and buckles, to diverting if somewhat perfunctory effect. It’s more enjoyable when it sings, spinning the busy, farcical romantic machinery of Rostand’s plot into an interconnected series of wistful pop arias. (The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner composed the music, while the band’s frontman, Matt Berninger, penned the lyrics with wife and frequent collaborator Carin Besser.) It makes sense that Roxanne, the much-coveted object of Cyrano’s affections, is also the movie’s most adept singer: As played by a luminous Haley Bennett (who made her screen debut playing a pop star in 2007’s “Music and Lyrics”), she ascends an emotional tier whenever she croons a line as simple as “I’d give anything for someone to say / That they can’t live without me and they’ll be there forever.”

Not just someone, of course. While Cyrano pines hopelessly for Roxanne, she locks eyes with Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a handsome young soldier who more than satisfies her yearning for male beauty. But it will fall to the conflicted Cyrano to answer her deeper need for wit and poetry, ghostwriting Christian’s love letters with a florid eloquence that feels both selfless and self-indulgent. The men’s reluctant alliance reaches its usual climax beneath Roxanne’s balcony, where her voice and Cyrano’s — which she mistakes for Christian’s — dovetail in a soaringly lovely duet. (It makes for much better woman-in-the-window cinema than Wright’s Netflix dud “The Woman in the Window.” ) And before long, love leads to war, coming to a head in an elaborate battle sequence shot on the ashen slopes of Mt. Etna, that very active Sicilian volcano. It’s a gratuitous flourish, perhaps, but also a suitably operatic one for this tale of grand passions explosively unleashed.

Wright has a penchant — sometimes a gift, sometimes a weakness — for such bold aesthetic flourishes. “Pride & Prejudice,” his first and still finest movie, established a visual style of vibrant immediacy, with serpentine long takes and elaborate mise-en-scène. His ornately stylized “Anna Karenina” threw formal caution (and realism) to the wind, not adapting so much as transfiguring Tolstoy’s classic with a sweeping display of Brechtian artifice. The experiments don’t always come off — “Atonement,” while dazzling, exuded more trickery than truth — but there’s something energizing about the director’s efforts to rattle the prestige-cinema foundations.

“Cyrano,” already drawn from Schmidt’s refurbished source material, seems less beholden to a rigid formal scheme than some of Wright’s earlier adaptations. For all the curtains-and-chandeliers sumptuousness of Sarah Greenwood’s production design and the unfussy elegance of Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran’s Oscar-nominated costumes, the movie — shot by Wright’s regular cinematographer, Seamus McGarvey — feels loose and light on its feet. Part of that stems from its many outdoor set pieces (itself a result of a mid-pandemic shooting schedule), including a charming seaside dance sequence in which Christian’s fellow soldiers bear him gracefully aloft.

But it also has something to do with the indeterminate historical and geographical setting. While “Cyrano de Bergerac” is usually set in 17th century Paris, this one was mostly shot in the Sicilian town of Noto, whose limestone walls and Baroque architecture stand in for an unspecified European city of old. That vagueness leaches some cultural specificity from Wright’s conception, though the idea seems to be to usher this “Cyrano” into a realm of universal, untethered feeling, where the common currency and language are, respectively, love and music. (Here it may be worth noting that Dinklage and Schmidt are married, and Bennett and Wright are partners; along with Berninger and Besser, think of these as romantic behind-the-scenes footnotes to a movie that wears its romanticism unabashedly on its sleeve . )

“Cyrano” slips in and out of that realm fitfully; it’s not always the most graceful retelling of this oft-told tale, and its ardent defense of love for love’s sake can feel paper-thin one moment and swooningly sincere the next. What gives the movie its sustaining pulse is Dinklage. Singing may not be this actor’s obvious forte (his ’90s punk-band days aside), which might seem like a fatal setback for a character defined by his masterly self-expression. But even when Dinklage’s vocals wobble, his soulful baritone and melancholy delivery carry the day. His expressions alone bring out the deep, aching vulnerability in this Cyrano, whose anguished feelings for Roxanne register with almost palpable force. “’Cause every time I see you,” he sings, “I am overcome” — and so, in these moments, are we.

'Cyrano'

Rating: PG-13, for some strong violence, thematic and suggestive material and brief language Running time: 2 hours, 3 minutes Playing: Starts Feb. 25 in general release

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‘Cyrano’ Review: Peter Dinklage Sings Out His Soul in Joe Wright’s Gonzo Musical Romance

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival. United Artists releases the film in theaters on Friday, February 25.

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, Joe Wright — one of the last true madmen in Hollywood cinema — rebounds from the folly of his “Woman in the Window” with a full-throated musical adaptation of “ Cyrano de Bergerac” soundtracked by The National, shot during COVID on Sicily (with hundreds of lavishly costumed extras singing a mope rock banger on the snowy peak of an active volcano!), and starring Peter Dinklage as a lovelorn poet who possesses the courage to sword-fight 10 men at a time but not the pride to confess his feelings to the one woman he’s loved for all eternity.

Maybe it’s just the clown makeup and corsets talking, but there are moments during Wright’s “Cyrano” — such as the literal rap battle during which Cyrano trades rhymes with a foe while they fence to the death — that delude you into thinking this must be the most gonzo work of mainstream art that someone has made in defiance of a plague since “The Decameron.” Is it good? In parts! Is it intoxicated with the same demented bravado that its namesake embodies when he sneaks behind the enemy lines of the Franco-Spanish War, but tragically lacks whenever he’s alone with his true love Roxanne (a ravishing Haley Bennett, with whom Wright himself is besotted in real life)? Absolutely. And that’s plenty to sing about.

For all of the insanity that Wright spirits into this project, however, the credit for its most unexpected ideas belongs to playwright and screenwriter Erica Schmidt, who first brought this musical version of “Cyrano” to life on stage in 2018. Wright surely recognized the genius of Dinklage’s casting in that production; not only does the actor’s singing voice echo the signature baritone of The National frontman Matt Berninger, but his “unique physique” lends Cyrano a far more poignant reason for his insecurity than the character’s traditional, cartoon proboscis. But even so, I suspect that what really lit a fire under Wright’s ass wasn’t just the source material, but also the chance to adapt it under the most psychotic of circumstances.

A shoot-the-moon stylist who isn’t afraid to work without a safety net (even if that means winding up in director ICU, right next to director jail, after every second movie he makes), Wright is someone who’s always been creatively inspired by a bind. In addition to directing several films about people who discover their true potential with their backs against the wall (e.g. “Hanna,” “The Darkest Hour”), Wright’s finest effort — a dazzlingly intricate “Anna Karenina” that warped the Russian novel into a snow-globe — was re-conceived from the ground up less than two months before the first day of shooting because the auteur had a radical new vision of what it should be. Wright sympathizes with Cyrano’s boldness and bluster, and wants so badly for this silver-tongued lovefool to risk falling on his face; he knows that the rewards can be worth it.

His “Cyrano” doesn’t waste any time swinging for the fences, as it begins with Roxanne launching into the first of the film’s many semi-conversational songs while ensconced in one of Massimo Cantini Parrini’s wonderfully operatic costumes. It’s an accurate preview of what’s to come: Lush, light on its feet, and more eccentric than it is involving. Bennett makes for a flawless Roxanne, exuding a flush-cheeked warmth that’s fringed with just a hint of vanity; she may be framed as an innocent in the love rhombus that forms as this story takes shape, but the value she places on looks is at the center of this whole mess.

Roxanne is kept by the rich and repulsive De Guiche ( Ben Mendelsohn , great despite his obvious ability to do this kind of villain role in his sleep), a typical situation for a beauty of her time. As her maid cracks: “Children need love, adults money.” Alas, the moment that Roxanne locks eyes with a handsome soldier across a crowded room ( Kelvin Harrison Jr. as the mutually infatuated Christian), she feels her needs being rearranged in a hurry. What an unfortunate turn of events for our poor Cyrano, who’s yearned for Roxanne since they were young, but always assumed that someone so fair would never “settle” for a man of stature. Several characters chide Cyrano for thinking so little of his crush, but the way Roxanne swoons for the first strapping hunk to walk through the door makes it easy to understand our hero’s concerns.

As those of us who regularly watch the Uma Thurman/Janeane Garofolo classic “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” on cable will be able to predict, Cyrano soon hatches a plan to express his emotions without risking potential rejection: He will write letters to Roxanne under Christian’s identity, and enjoy their ensuing romance secondhand. “I will make you eloquent,” he says to the tongue-tied soldier, “while you will make me handsome.” Of course things quickly grow more complicated from there, building to the stage world’s second-most famous balcony scene before moving into much darker territory in a way that will surprise people who mostly know this story via the Steve Martin vehicle “Roxanne” or any of the countless sitcoms that have borrowed its most iconic beats.

But this “Cyrano” is all about melody, or lack thereof (as is often the case). Co-written by Berninger and his wife Carin Besser, the unfussy lyrics add some easy zest to the kind of epistolary romance that’s often so enervating to watch on-screen, as Cyrano and the rest of the cast belt out their feelings — almost exclusively to themselves, and not to each other. With few choruses and even fewer hooks, most of the musical numbers sound like the ramblings of a racing mind, leaving the film’s army of dancers to supply too much of the swoon and spectacle.

All the same, that spectacle often proves swoon-worthy, with highlight sequences including the Broadway-accented “I want” song that Christian and the rest of his garrison perform on a Sicilian rock fort (one of the film’s many astonishing locales), and the part where Mendelsohn storms into town on a cloud of Andrew Lloyd Webber-esque cheese guitar. Most of the ditties sound more like half-finished The National demos; Dinklage, Harrison, Bennett and the rest can carry a tune and then some, but only a cameo appearance by troubadours Glen Hansard, Sam Amidon, and Scott Folan compels the movie to serve up a meatier song. It’s an outlier in a movie that swirls together too many strong ingredients for any one of them to leave much of a taste.

Any one of them except for Peter Dinklage. The actor has never shied away from roles that hinge on his size — in large part, one imagines, because he’s only been offered so many alternatives — but his Cyrano allows him to confront the insecurities that come with any physical difference more candidly than ever before. “Cyrano de Bergerac” is nothing if not a tragedy about a proud man diminished by self-doubt, Dinklage’s implosive performance is so poignant for how Cyrano struggles to escape the atonality of his own thoughts.

“My heart’s not even angry, that’s just the way that it breaks” he raps in that “Hamilton”-ready duel at the start of the movie, and while most of the ensuing drama is stifled by Wright’s madcap staging (which demands all of our attention) and the loose-fitting modernity that it wears, the wastefulness of Cyrano’s self-fulfilling prophecy always manages to cut through the noise.

“Cyrano” premiered at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival. United Artists will release it later this year.

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Cyrano Review

Peter dinklage takes on the classic hero once more, but this time on film..

Cyrano is in exclusive Los Angeles theaters on Dec. 17 and in select theaters across the U.S. Jan. 21.

There’s a reason Edmond Rostand’s drama Cyrano de Bergerac remains so relevant more than 100 years after its first telling. Watching an underdog with an ungainly physical appearance manage to outwit and outcharm his peers, and then enamour the woman of his dreams is inherently a good time. Now, director Joe Wright has given the oft-told tale an injection of fresh creativity by adapting the 2019 stage musical by Erica Schmidt to screen starring Peter Dinklage as Cyrano. Unfortunately, though, despite some strong performances, this adaptation doesn’t work as well as hoped.

Following the same arc of Rostand’s original story, Wright and Schmidt only make slight adjustments to its bones, such as changing Cyrano’s “affliction” of possessing a garishly large nose to what he self-describes as being a “midget.” Despite his brilliance with language and strategy, his short stature feeds his crippling self-doubt in one area, which is ever wooing his distant cousin, best friend, and love of his life, Roxanne (Haley Bennett).

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And if we’re going to be honest, Roxanne is inherently a problematic female character. While her station in life and in time make her a commodity to the whims of man, there is an admirable quality to her wanting to be more than just arm candy and tied to someone who she can love. But the machinations of the story often reduce her to the shallow end of the pool when it comes to her life choices. In this adaptation, she’s portrayed as flighty and gorgeous, led entirely by her overdramatic heart. She knowingly allows herself to be courted by a fop like Count De Guiche (an appropriately unctious Ben Mendelsohn) because of his money and access, when she has no intention of accepting his imminent proposal.

And then she falls into a case of love at first sight with a mere glance at young soldier, Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), and then uses Cyrano’s clear affection for her to get him to orchestrate a meeting for them to meet. And he’s so besotted by her, that he then helps feed Christian, who possesses no wit or sweet language to woo, the words that will make Roxanne fall even more madly in love with the handsome fibber of her dreams. Even if you don’t know the specifics of where the story goes, it’s safe to tease that the ruse only gets more complicated as a love quadrangle forms involving Roxanne, Christian, Cyrano, and De Guiche that is often played as a straight-up farce. But Cyrano leans into the real stakes as war quickly encroaches on their reality and the three men are forced to leave Roxanne behind as their very lives are on the line.

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Perhaps letting the story lean into the tragic rather than the comedic is where this adaptation of Cyrano trips itself up. If Wright has an Achilies’ heel in his direction of period pieces, it's his proclivity to embrace the staginess of theater and translate that with fealty directly to the screen, which can be wince-inducing. He loves using all the musical tropes, like staging dancing peasants outside a carriage or having soldier-training exercises choreographed like dance numbers. Depending on the viewer, that’s either going to pull you in, or knock you out of the moment, and it was in the latter camp for me. Characters just break into song and then don’t anymore, and how effectively that works is entirely based on the prowess of the singers. Bennett and Harrison Jr. acquit themselves well on that front, both possessing incredible voices that beguile. Dinklage and Mendelsohn have halting voices, so they make due with more naturalistic approaches, which work for their characters but don’t make for great listens.

However, the film and the entire cast, especially Dinklage, all excel when acting is all that is asked of them. Cyrano often finds its groove when it doesn’t break into song, and the scenes between the actors are just about the text and the depth of emotion they are sharing with one another. And that’s pretty telling, because musicals are supposed to use song as the conduit to the most truthful representation of what the characters are experiencing. The songs don’t do that well here in their lyrics or execution. The format even lessens the iconic sequence in the first act when Cyrano dresses down the pompous actor, Montfleury, and then duels the prig, Valvert. Wright and Schmidt turn Cyrano’s legendary putdowns into a rap, which isn’t easy to follow, and ends up being entirely one-sided, which diminishes the joy of discovering in the moment how smart, quick, and lively a character Cyrano truly is.

The film does pick up steam in figuring out how to balance the story with the songs by the third act and hits a genuine home run with the heart-wrenching, soldier’s goodbye song “Where I Fall.” Sung before a doomed battle, it is both intimate and genuine in a way that feels deeply authentic to the moment in the film and the emotions that it's meant to be capturing and reflecting. It’s also where Harrison Jr. really makes his portrayal of Christian something special, reframing the man often just seen as an empty-headed himbo into a truly heroic character that makes his fate something to really care about in equal measure to Cyrano’s.

Aesthetically, if you admire any of Wright’s previous films, then you’re aware the man knows how to stage and shoot the hell out of a richly appointed period piece. His adaptations of Pride & Prejudice (2005) and Anna Karenina (2012) are visually sumptuous, and Cyrano follows in their footsteps. And as he and long-time production designer Sarah Greenwood did with those two films, they ground the loftier elements of Cyrano’s world and story with the grunginess of reality, from the muck women step through in their gorgeous gowns on the city streets to the gory truths of warfare on a battlefield. And his cameras are always moving, which makes for an engaging watch no matter if the songs or their staging aren’t always hitting the mark. Plus, the costuming by Massimo Cantini Parrini is to die for, and his cinematographer Seamus McGarvey knows how to shoot them and the environments framing them to best effect, be it a well-appointed parlor or a stark, white and gray landscape on the cusp of warfare.

In the end, Cyrano works well when the actors are able to be in the moment, mostly without the artifice of the musical numbers. Some hit well enough, but the scenes that stay with you are mostly the ones with just the actors, talking to one another and doing what they do best with just the music of their own talents guiding them.

Cyrano is an interesting but uneven adaptation of Erica Schmidt’s 2019 musical of the same name, which itself is an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic drama, Cyrano de Bergerac. As a musical, only a few songs really stand out, which is always problematic. There’s also a staginess to the whole endeavor that feels awkward and ham-handed when transposed onto the big screen. But director Joe Wright does get excellent performances from his whole cast, and creates a lush and beautiful period piece playground for the characters to exist within.

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