Cyrano: Stirring Adaptation of Classic Love Triangle Sings Its Heart Out

By Kim Hughes

Rating: A

You can say this much for director Joe Wright: he’s fearless.

It’s hard to think of a riskier venture than a film adaptation of a stage musical — one among countless others mounted across the centuries, some scripted by heavyweights like Anthony Burgess — based on a 19th century play about arguably the most tragic love triangle in history.

Let’s not even count the previous film adaptations of Cyrano de Bergerac, the play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand, set in 17th century Paris and based around a poet-soldier certain he is too ugly to claim the woman he adores, who then pours his love into letters sent to his beloved Roxanne by her handsome but otherwise ordinary paramour, Christian (here played by Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), who passes the missives off as his own.

Yet Wright’s Cyrano, based on a screenplay by Erica Schmidt adapting her own 2018 stage musical, is superb by almost any measure even though I found myself wondering, “Who on Earth will queue to see this oddball, square-peg musical period piece starring Peter Dinklage… who sings.”

That Dinklage is married to Schmidt in real-life, and that he and co-star Haley Bennett are reprising their roles as Cyrano and Roxanne from Schmidt’s theatre production only ups the stakes. Yet Wright — whose 2017 war drama Darkest Hour landed leading man Gary Oldman a truckload of awards including an Oscar — has created something at once visually beautiful and palpably heartbreaking.

Read our Q&A with Cyrano actor Haley Bennett

Even those not generally into musicals and who typically find sudden choreographed dance sequences in movies more distracting than entertaining (raising my hand here) are bound to be persuaded by Cyrano, which glides along seamlessly, tweaking the plot here and there for narrative impact but never losing sight of the source material’s timeless messages about love, confidence, truth-telling, and the guaranteed cruelty of fate.

Dinklage’s casting is the most obvious riff on the original story (Cyrano was supposed to be disfigured by a hideous nose) and the script addresses his dwarfism and what he perceives to be his deficits head-on. The film also preserves some of the ick factor of its original era, whereby Roxanne’s suitor De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn) at one point threatens to either marry her or rape her.

The basic thrust of the story remains true. As gifted at swordplay as wordplay, decorated French soldier Cyrano longs for the lovely Roxanne, whose beauty has drawn the attention of the De Guiche who schemes to have her at any cost. But Roxanne is a free spirit, unconcerned about the money or status a marriage to De Guiche might bring, and when her eyes land on dashing young recruit Christian, she is smitten.

In one the film’s most incisive scenes, Roxanne summons Cyrano to a secret meeting. He hopes against hope that she is going to tell him looks don’t matter and their lifelong friendship should move to the next level. Instead, she begs Cyrano to shield Christian from the worst the French military can offer.

Dinklage’s performance here is crushingly sad, and he is never more persuasive than as a man convinced he is unworthy of love despite his substantial social standing and towering intellect. I freely admit to applying transference, wondering if the pathos Dinklage summons is an extension of his own personal experience or whether he is simply a brilliant actor. Either way, the role is now quintessentially his.

Of course, the story of Cyrano doesn’t end well for anyone though the truth, or what passes for it beneath the haze of unrequited love amid war, does prevail. And while it is difficult to imagine this peculiar, fantastical film connecting on a massive mainstream scale, a more poetic consideration of who and what is lovable is likewise hard to fathom.

Cyrano. Directed by Joe Wright. Screenplay by Erica Schmidt. Starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., and Ben Mendelsohn. Opens in theatres February 25.