Cyra­no

There are two kinds of char­ac­ter actors: those who are chameleons that dis­ap­pear into each role; and those who tend to deliv­er a vari­a­tion on well-liked schtick. Peter Din­klage, in Cyra­no, dis­tin­guish­es him­self as the latter.

This is not so much Peter Dinklage’s Cyra­no as it is Peter Din­klage in Cyra­no. And that’s no bad thing, for those who enjoy the wit and intel­li­gence that Din­klage pos­sess­es, with some effec­tive light brood­ing in between and absolute­ly no attempt at a French accent.

Joe Wright​’s Cyra­no is adapt­ed from a stage musi­cal ver­sion of Edmond Ros­tand clas­sic play, with music from The Nation­al and writ­ten by Dinklage’s wife, Eri­ca Schmidt. The plot stays large­ly true to the orig­i­nal text, with Cyra­no believ­ing him­self too ugly to pur­sue Rox­ane (Haley Ben­nett), and instead helps Chris­t­ian (Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr) win her heart by writ­ing love
let­ters for him.

Their plan is thrown into dis­ar­ray by the pow­er­ful De Guiche (Ben Mendel­sohn) who also has sights set on this fair maid­en. Only in this ver­sion Cyrano’s over­sized nose is swapped out for Dinklage’s dwarfism, while De Guiche is pro­mot­ed to Duke­dom from the off and is more straight­for­ward­ly vil­lain­ous. That proves a suc­cess­ful inter­pre­ta­tion, and Mendel­sohn chews the scenery with night­mar­ish aplomb, styled with grotesque make­up that makes him appear in the midst of decay.

Yet Mendelsohn’s com­mit­ment to camp can­not com­pen­sate for some of the musi­cal num­bers where the orches­tra­tion is woe­ful­ly thin. He and Din­klage have decent voic­es, but with such shal­low instru­men­tals they are aban­doned on screen. This is not the case for every num­ber: a coun­try music style lament by fear­ful sol­diers is effec­tive; as is a duet between Ben­nett and Dinklage.

And Har­ri­son Jr has such a rich, emo­tive voice that he can fill the room with it, but for the most part the audio can­not stand up to the visu­als – and what visu­als they are! It’s hard to over­state the joy of being immersed in such a feast of bright mat­te pas­tels and exquis­ite cos­tum­ing. The dance num­bers are equal­ly love­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly a bal­let num­ber from a group of train­ing cadets.

But some of the visu­als are also the film’s down­fall. The age gap between Cyra­no and Rox­ane appears to be around 30 years, and all allu­sions to his pres­ence in her child­hood and his eter­nal love for her have an unset­tling preda­to­ry impli­ca­tion. And, while the cast­ing seems to have been done with the best colour­blind inten­tions, no one seems to have judged the sig­nif­i­cance of hav­ing a Black man play­ing the sweet, objec­ti­fied dum dum who’s will­ing to sac­ri­fice him­self for the greater good of white characters.

It’s an imper­fect but enjoy­able adap­ta­tion, with Wright, like Din­klage, deliv­er­ing some­thing charis­mat­ic but insubstantial.

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