By Ann Hornaday<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Joe Wright gives \u201cCyrano de Bergerac\u201d a timely, smartly conceived refresh with \u201cCyrano\u201d, his adaptation of an adaptation of Edmond Rostand\u2019s 1897 play.<\/p>\n In 2019, writer Erica Schmidt staged a production starring her husband, Peter Dinklage, in the title role, adding music by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the band the National. <\/p>\n In Wright\u2019s screen version of that show, the director evinces the same sensitivity he\u2019s brought to such films as \u201cPride & Prejudice\u201d, \u201cAtonement\u201d and \u201cAnna Karenina\u201d, bringing a newfound sense of spontaneity and freedom to his distinctive jewel-box aesthetic.<\/p>\n Filmed in the picturesque Sicilian town of Noto during the height of the pandemic lockdown, Cyrano is unmistakably a period piece, transpiring in the 17th century during the Franco-Spanish War. But it\u2019s also infused with anachronistic touches that give it a jolt of offhand humour and fierce urgency. <\/p>\n As the film opens, a dewily radiant \u2013 but nearly penniless \u2013 beauty named Roxanne (Haley Bennett) prepares to attend the theatre with her oily and insistent suitor, the Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn). <\/p>\n Once ensconced, the play begins, only to be interrupted by Cyrano, who swoops in on a rope and proceeds to insult the lead actor, disrupt the audience and engage the foppish hanger-on Valvert (Joshua James) in a rap battle and duel.<\/p>\n The sequence of anticipation, wordplay and swordsmanship accelerates with balletic energy, with Wright\u2019s unobtrusive camera always on the move to capture the action as well as smaller gestures. It\u2019s here that Roxanne locks eyes with Christian (Kelvin Harrison jr), and the two fall for each other in an instant. <\/p>\n Later, the handsome but inarticulate Christian will enlist the supposedly unhandsome but eloquent Cyrano to woo Roxanne from afar, in a plot of unrequited love, unspoken desire and ego-driven self-deceit that has lasted through the ages.<\/p>\n I say \u201csupposedly unhandsome\u201d because, although Dinklage\u2019s Cyrano might be deemed sexually stymied by his dwarfism, it\u2019s difficult to imagine anyone being immune to his smouldering appeal. With his ember-like eyes, soulful face and core of bristling anger, Dinklage gives his character (whose fatal flaw in Rostand\u2019s play was an unattractively large nose) a charge of pure animal magnetism. <\/p>\n Bennett, as the bright but vain and manipulative Roxanne, plays her character with an air of suspicion that something might be sparking between them, even though their lifelong friendship has been purely platonic. (Then again, Roxanne\u2019s inability to get past Cyrano\u2019s \u201cunique physique\u201d, in the words of his friend Le Bret, eerily anticipates today\u2019s social media culture in which image is everything. \u2019Twas ever thus.)<\/p>\n What ensues is one of the great tragedies of romantic literature, a heartbreaking exercise in classic irony that serves as a commentary on appearance and reality, fa\u00e7ade and authenticity, and human beings\u2019 enduring inability to get out of our own way. <\/p>\n Set against gorgeous real-life locations (including a dramatic wartime sequence filmed on Mount Etna), Wright\u2019s \u201cCyrano\u201d is bathed in creamy pastels and increasingly stylised tones of grey and bone white, the soothing palette spiked with occasional shots of crimson, by way of the jackets worn by Cyrano, Christian and their fellow soldiers. <\/p>\n The stagecraft, seemingly as inspired by commedia dell\u2019arte, tumbles and pirouettes as by grittily naturalistic cinema verite, possesses a buoyant sense of spirit and movement.<\/p>\n When Wright comes in for the occasional close-up, it\u2019s to capture the pain, confusion and longing on his protagonists\u2019 alternately bemused and besotted faces.<\/p>\n \u201cCyrano\u201d joins a crop of recent movies that have sought to revivify the musical form; here, the effort is uneven, if ultimately deeply moving. Although the Dessner brothers\u2019 songs, with lyrics by bandmate Matt Berninger and Carin Besser, are perfectly suited to Dinklage\u2019s mellow baritone, they begin to sound repetitive and on-the-nose over the film\u2019s two-hour running time. <\/p>\n Bennett and Harrison are both lovely, lyrical singers, but oddly \u201cCyrano\u2019s\u201d most shatteringly effective musical moment arrives by a trio of cameo players, when Glen Hansard, Sam Amidon and Scott Folan \u2013 playing soldiers about to go to battle \u2013 sing \u201cWherever I Fall\u201d, an achingly beautiful anthem to love, grief and yearning.<\/p>\n That scene feels particularly affecting at a moment when the world apprehensively awaits another war. <\/p>\n \u201cCyrano\u201d, like the best art its implacable hero celebrates, is full of poetry, romance, terror and truth.<\/p>\n It feels beamed from a distant past, but also sprung fully formed from 21st-century anxieties. Wright has given Rostand and Schmidt\u2019s twin visions his own signature: fleet, playful and unapologetically fanciful, but also tempered by surpassing sadness and loss. <\/p>\n The result is equal parts heart-rending and haunting.<\/p>\n Source <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Ann Hornaday Joe Wright gives \u201cCyrano de Bergerac\u201d a timely, smartly conceived refresh with \u201cCyrano\u201d, his adaptation of an adaptation of Edmond Rostand\u2019s 1897 play. In 2019, writer Erica Schmidt staged a production starring her husband, Peter Dinklage, in the title role, adding music by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of the band the National. 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