Cyrano review – Peter Dinklage captivates as letter ghostwriter in musical version | Film
The deeply unusual tragi-romantic farce of Cyrano de Bergerac has been tailored for the films many occasions, with well-known variations starring Gérard Depardieu and Steve Martin. Now it’s revived once more as a musical, with screenwriter Erica Schmidt adapting her hit stage model of Edmond Rostand’s 1897’s play, and Joe Wright directing. As within the stage present, this stars Schmidt’s husband Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister from TV’s Recreation of Thrones), who brings a piercing dedication to the function and he’s persuasive in the best way that the likes of Depardieu and Martin weren’t. Dinklage takes the title function: the poet, soldier and poignantly insecure would-be lover, finessing the unique by displaying that the issue is society’s angle to Cyrano’s restricted peak, slightly than the standard foolish and unfunnily phallic large nostril. This Cyrano has a normal-sized schnoz and maybe merely not having the tiresome pretend prosthesis makes his efficiency extra accessible and successful.
It’s set in Seventeenth-century Paris, though Wright cheekily exhibits a theatre with an electrical follow-spot gentle. France is at warfare with Spain, and Cyrano is the hot-headed soldier and swordsman (the script makes a lairy allusion to Cyrano’s, ahem, endowment) who’s hopelessly in love with Roxanne (Haley Bennett), a buddy since childhood, however too self-conscious about his look to say something. She is being courted by the rich, merciless and charmless Duc de Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), however Roxanne falls head-over-heels for Cyrano’s fellow officer Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr) who’s sweet-natured however hopelessly tongue-tied. So poor, self-effacing Cyrano, wanting nothing greater than for his beloved to be blissful, provides to ghostwrite Christian’s passionately eloquent love letters and coach him within the language of affection.
Apparently, having been stunned by Christian’s supposed love-rhetoric with all its extravagance, she teasingly tells Cyrano that his personal language is “coded”, and there’s one thing right here for literary theorists about Christian and Cyrano standing respectively for high-flown language and base actuality. The end result will not be precisely the screwball comedy you would possibly count on, however one thing a lot slower and extra solemn, which in its ultimate act decelerates additional into the heart-wrenching distress which has undoubtedly (however for me, bafflingly) made it a perennial hit and will but make this successful to rival Les Misérables. Dinklage at all times holds the display screen together with his pure charisma.
