"Cyrano" -- Movie Review

 

This week at Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the musical drama “Cyrano”, starring Peter Dinklage.

Synopsis

When Cyrano learns that his beloved Roxanne is in love with another man, he starts writing her love letters that seem to come from the other man -- but will Cyrano ever be able to express his own love to her?

Story

Cyrano (Dinklage) is well-known in his town for being intelligent, witty and articulate.  He is also known for being a midget.  As a guard for royalty, he’s got tremendous skills of swordsmanship and only the foolish or reckless would dare challenge him.  But as stalwart as he may be, he does have one weakness:  her name is Roxanne (Haley Bennett), a beautiful young woman he’s known for many years.  So awestruck is he by her beauty that he cannot bring himself to admit his true love for her for fear that she would reject him because he’s so short.  This does not stop others from pursuing Roxanne – one of which being a Duke, whom she finds repulsive. 

Roxanne, as it turns out, has her sights set for someone else:  a young man by the name of Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.).  Christian is neither as wealthy as the Duke nor as erudite as Cyrano, but he does have one advantage over both men:  he’s quite handsome.  One night, Roxanne set eyes on Christian and it was love at first sight.  From that moment on, they both knew they had to have each other.  Yet it would seem unlikely, especially since the much older Duke could rescue Roxanne from poverty.  Regardless of whether she wound up with the Duke or with Christian, Cyrano would be heartbroken. 

When Roxanne asks her good friend Cyrano to act as an intermediary for setting up a proper introduction with Christian, he is of course distraught because he thought Roxanne would be confessing her affection towards him.  Nevertheless, because he loves Roxanne and wants her to be happy, he agrees to set up a meeting with Christian.  Once Christian explains his reluctance due to his humble education, Cyrano offers to write letters to Roxanne on his behalf.  Upon receiving these missives, she truly believes that it is Christian who has authored them.  If Christian and Roxanne do in fact fall in love with each other, will Roxanne ever learn that it was really Cyrano who composed each billet doux ? 

Review

One of the sure-fire ways to ruin a film adaptation of a classic story is to indiscriminately add music to it – and that’s precisely where this version of “Cyrano” goes irrevocably wrong.  Apparently, this is based on a musical stage production, which itself was probably ill-conceived.  Here, instead of Cyrano’s self-image suffering from an overly endowed proboscis, his “shortcoming” is the fact that he is vertically challenged.  In this re-imagined version, there is a certain degree of wokeness that cannot be ignored; for example, the original story takes place in the 1600’s and there are people of different races in key roles and there is no mention of this.  With this updated version, the casting is somewhat “Hamiltonesque”. 

It is highly unlikely that you will waltz out of the theater singing any of these little ditties, regardless of how many times they may get repeated (out of spite, one might assume).  Also, if you’re able to suspend your disbelief into thinking that this Cyrano is quite the swashbuckler, then bless your guileless little heart.  Speaking of suspending one’s disbelief, are we really to understand that the Roxanne that is portrayed here is desirable enough to be the object of desire by three men simultaneously?  If so, is this town suffering a dearth of attractive women?  This is utterly ponderous. 

The information on this film states that it will be released in mid-January.  This is rather telling, given that this early-winter/post-holiday timeframe is typically reserved for lesser releases – in other words, it’s the season of garbage dumps, or movies that the distributor doesn’t believe will be terribly well-received.  After all, if they thought it would attract a sizable audience, they would be releasing it during the holiday season.  It is usually these end-of-year releases that are done for either of two reasons:  it’ll garner “boffo B.O.”, as they used to say, or it is likely that the picture will be worthy of one or many award nominations.  Neither will be the case with this “Cyrano”.