It is a sign of these grievance-mongering times that Peter Dinklage’s recent publicity tour cast less attention on his own new movie than on his antipathy for Disney’s forthcoming Snow White remake. That the actor and member of the dwarfism community might deplore Disney’s insensitivity is, of course, entirely reasonable. Nevertheless, the misdirected focus is a shame. Cyrano, Dinklage’s biggest project since the conclusion of Game of Thrones, is well worth the public’s contemplation, and the actor’s performance in the lead is a major part of why.
The ninth film from director Joe Wright (Atonement, Darkest Hour), Cyrano comes to cinemas by way of both page and stage. An adaptation of the beloved Edmond Rostand play, Wright’s motion picture began life as a musical by Erica Schmidt, with songs by the rock band The National. That Schmidt, Dinklage’s wife of 17 years, should design the perfect vehicle for her husband’s talents is unsurprising. Perhaps less foreseeable is how compellingly her vision has made the leap to the big screen, particularly in a moviegoing environment that saw the musical dramas In the Heights and Dear Evan Hansen land with thuds as recently as last year.
Reprising roles from the off-Broadway show are Dinklage and Haley Bennett (Hillbilly Elegy), who co-stars here as Roxanne, a beautiful young orphan torn between practicality and romance. The first of these impulses, represented by the repugnant Duke de Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), offers a life of ease but none of the excitement of forbidden amour. The second, arriving in the form of dashing swordsman Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), provides endless fascination but little of the wealth one needs to thrive in 17th century France.
It is a mark of both Roxanne’s character and the movie’s tone that this decision is no choice at all. Surrounded by dancing Parisians and soldiers who burst into song, Roxanne is as likely to pursue a loveless marriage as she is to sally forth without an enchanting gown. (The film’s costumes, nominated for an Academy Award, are superb.) Instead, and forgivably, our heroine begins a courtship with the handsome Christian, struck above all else by the young man’s seeming eloquence. What Roxanne fails to grasp is that her beau is no silver-tongued poet but a monosyllabic clod. Christian’s letters, and increasingly his very conversation, proceed from the heart of Cyrano, whose unrequited love for Roxanne comprises the story’s most important dramatic material.
Among director Wright’s greatest gifts, first honed in his gorgeous 2005 Pride & Prejudice adaptation, is his ability to make the past feel at once lived-in and remote. The Duke de Guiche, for instance, may be caked in aristocratic makeup, but his looming physicality suggests motives as ageless as sin. Roxanne’s hair and garb are elaborate, but note how both fade after the plot-transforming Siege of Arras, in which Christian and Cyrano together face mortal combat. Accompanying these stylistic flourishes are filmmaking gestures of a more daring kind. When Christian and Roxanne meet eyes for the first time, Wright slowly eliminates the background chatter to indicate the depth of their connection. The effect is moving rather than cliched. Staging the famous balcony scene, he leaves Rostand behind and thrusts Cyrano to the very brink of discovery.
To the extent that Wright has helped to shape Dinklage’s portrayal of the title character, still further credit is due. Having marred an otherwise first-rate Game of Thrones performance with a labored British accent, the actor drops the affectation here and delivers his lines with unstudied ease. Something similar is true, throughout, of the ensemble’s singing manner, which comes across as sweetly sincere rather than bombastic or artificial. This is, most audiences will concur, a wise move on balance. As in the case of 2016’s La La Land, authenticity of approach is worth a great deal more than calculated tonal lyricism. What is lost in technical vocal mastery is made up for in candor, spontaneity, and verisimilitude.
On the other side of the balance sheet, alas, are a series of artistic choices that push Cyrano too far in the direction of camp, and not of the military kind. Like all contemporary musicals, the film is heavily stylized, with soldiers “fighting” in synchronization and Christian’s letters descending on Roxanne as if from an invisible cloud. While most of these sequences are in keeping with the movie’s spirit, the film’s dance choreography can feel strangely modern at times, with steps that might as well have been issued from a Shakira concert. Just as perplexing is our hero’s early duel with an insolent vicomte, who looks for all the world like the flamboyant Prince Edward character in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart. One half-expects an unsympathetic Cyrano to toss the poor fellow from a window.
Whether the movie’s conclusion represents a yet more substantive flaw will depend, in large part, on the viewer’s opinion of what used to be called the martial virtues. In Rostand’s 1897 masterpiece, Cyrano dies on his feet, sword in hand. Schmidt and Wright’s production, meanwhile, ends in self-condemnation. It may well be that such an outcome aligns more perfectly with the orthodoxies of our age, in which devotion to one’s “true” identity is perhaps the highest good. Fidelity to current norms, however, is not the same thing as wisdom. Hollywood can buffet us with it, but we don’t have to like it.
Graham Hillard teaches English and creative writing at Trevecca Nazarene University.
