Post by Dracula on Feb 27, 2022 23:09:24 GMT -5
Cyrano(2/16/2022)
On February 6th 2004 I went to see a small independent film that had recently opened at a multiplex I tended to go to because I could easily get to it by bus. I would have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time and had been a film buff for a while but wasn’t really regularly going to the local arthouses at the time and mostly only went to smaller movies when they crossed over to “regular” theaters. That movie was called The Station Agent, and it was something of a “little movie that could” and had gotten some nominations from the guilds and the Independent Spirit Awards, which was probably why it was playing at this theater. In retrospect this movie was a starting point for a lot of people who would become big talents. It was Todd McCarthy’s debut film and was also a prominent early role for Bobby Cannavale but the person it most prominently introduced me to was of course its star Peter Dinklage. I wouldn’t say The Station Agent was one of my favorite movies but I did like it a lot and every time Dinklage would show up with something like Find Me Guilty I’d think “whoa, it’s the dude from The Station Agent, good for him.” Then in 2011 Dinklage got the role that would bring him to the attention not just of film buffs who pay attention to small movies and bit players and to the masses at large: that of Tyrion Lannister on the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” His work on that show would win him four Emmys and make him close to a household name and give him work in some pretty prominent films, but still, usually just as a supporting actor or co-star. But now, in 2021 he’s finally been given a starring role in a big awards contender: a new musical adaptation of a classic tale called simply Cyrano.
The story of “Cyrano” should be familiar… or then again maybe it isn’t. Like most version of the story this is an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play about the life of the 17th Century warrior poet Cyrano de Bergerac, who is of course played here by Dinklage. Traditionally de Bergerac is depicted as a confident swordsman who is nonetheless self-conscious about his large nose and his looks in general and is thus unwilling to confess his love for his childhood friend Roxane (Haley Bennett). Here of course that central body issue has been switched from a long nose to dwarfism. So, perhaps out of a desire to selflessly make her happy or perhaps out of a desire to catch her on the rebound he decides to help the man Roxane does have a crush on after “falling in love” with him on first sight, a younger soldier in de Bergerac’s military division named Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who is good hearted and attractive but is clumsy with his words by writing some love letters for him to sign his own name to and send to Roxane. However, both are going to compete for her affection with a nobleman named De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who is a possessive asshole but who is very rich and who would be the “match” made for her under the traditional strictures of semi-arranged marriages of the day.
Edmond Rostand’s play was in rhymed verse in its original French version, something that sometimes is and sometimes isn’t retained when it’s translated into English. The dialogue here is primarily in prose and is calibrated to be very contemporary and understandable, almost to the point of being anachronistic. In place of the verse however the film has added songs that were previously composed for a Broadway adaptation that Peter Dinklage also starred in. Rather than being composed by a traditional musical writer they were written by Aaron Dessner, Bryce Dessner, Matt Berninger, and Carin Besser, three of whom were members of the indie rock band The National and Besser has worked with them as well. I’m not a huge fan of The National but I do know their sound, which is kind of a bar band blues with a touch of folk and punk and they aren’t necessarily the most obvious choice for a romantic musical set in 17th century France. The music here doesn’t sound exactly like their usual work, it’s certainly not what I’d call rock and roll, rather it’s orchestrated in much the way you’d expect from a musical but the songwriting does not scream “Broadway” and is instead more of a series of ballads and you can kind of hear some of that The National songwriting beneath the surface. Peter Dinklage is not primarily a singer but does keep up here and it probably helps that he sings with a very specific type of baritone that’s different from what you usually hear form the stars of musicals but is not dissimilar from Matt Berninger’s, which may well be why The National was brought in to write the songs in the first place.
The film was directed by Joe Wright, a filmmaker whose been fairly prominent in the last twenty years but who’s style I’ve never quite been able to put a finger on until now. I guess he’s kind of a successor to Kenneth Branagh: a British filmmaker who has some interest in making commercial genre films but who’s at his best when he’s adapting classic and contemporary works of literature. His early films like his 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was fairly straightforward and so was his follow-up Atonement but that film had this stand-out long single shot (from before those became cliché) which pointed to things to come. As he got bolder his trick for making period pieces was to go pretty maximalist; he won’t turn things all the way up to eleven like Baz Luhrmann would but he will turn it up to an eight or a nine while most people would only turn it up to a six or a seven and that’s certainly the case with Cyrano. Wright certainly isn’t afraid of anachronism in his casting and is happy to let some theatrical elements of the original production stand on screen. Obviously he’s also staging these musical numbers which are perhaps a little more restrained than in some other musicals but which do incorporate some mass dance sequences.
Of course it’s Dinklage’s performance that this film will likely be remembered for and he’s quite good. I wouldn’t say it’s his absolute best work but he manages to have that signature “panache” during Cyrano’s more confident moments but also makes a believable transition into Cyrano the bumbling simp when Roxanne shows up. I would say that the rest of the film’s cast, while good, is perhaps a bit undercooked. Kelvin Harrison Jr. is cool as Christian but I must say that Haley Bennett does not quite have the star power to really feel like someone who’s going to have this many men absolutely losing their shit over her. Don’t get me wrong, Bennett is a beautiful woman but a more familiar face in that role might have added that certain something to make this all gel a bit more. I would also say that there’s a certain melodrama to Edmond Rostand’s original play that carries over to this which may strike some audiences as being a bit odd. The villain played by Ben Mendelsohn is a bit over the top and the story’s ending plays a bit more like an idealized Catholic notion of romance than like something I expect actual humans to engage in. Some of the contextual viewing that people bring to Shakespeare adaptations and the like may be needed to fully enjoy the film, but I did admire just how much Wright was able to bring this to life.
***1/2 out of Five
On February 6th 2004 I went to see a small independent film that had recently opened at a multiplex I tended to go to because I could easily get to it by bus. I would have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time and had been a film buff for a while but wasn’t really regularly going to the local arthouses at the time and mostly only went to smaller movies when they crossed over to “regular” theaters. That movie was called The Station Agent, and it was something of a “little movie that could” and had gotten some nominations from the guilds and the Independent Spirit Awards, which was probably why it was playing at this theater. In retrospect this movie was a starting point for a lot of people who would become big talents. It was Todd McCarthy’s debut film and was also a prominent early role for Bobby Cannavale but the person it most prominently introduced me to was of course its star Peter Dinklage. I wouldn’t say The Station Agent was one of my favorite movies but I did like it a lot and every time Dinklage would show up with something like Find Me Guilty I’d think “whoa, it’s the dude from The Station Agent, good for him.” Then in 2011 Dinklage got the role that would bring him to the attention not just of film buffs who pay attention to small movies and bit players and to the masses at large: that of Tyrion Lannister on the HBO series “Game of Thrones.” His work on that show would win him four Emmys and make him close to a household name and give him work in some pretty prominent films, but still, usually just as a supporting actor or co-star. But now, in 2021 he’s finally been given a starring role in a big awards contender: a new musical adaptation of a classic tale called simply Cyrano.
The story of “Cyrano” should be familiar… or then again maybe it isn’t. Like most version of the story this is an adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play about the life of the 17th Century warrior poet Cyrano de Bergerac, who is of course played here by Dinklage. Traditionally de Bergerac is depicted as a confident swordsman who is nonetheless self-conscious about his large nose and his looks in general and is thus unwilling to confess his love for his childhood friend Roxane (Haley Bennett). Here of course that central body issue has been switched from a long nose to dwarfism. So, perhaps out of a desire to selflessly make her happy or perhaps out of a desire to catch her on the rebound he decides to help the man Roxane does have a crush on after “falling in love” with him on first sight, a younger soldier in de Bergerac’s military division named Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who is good hearted and attractive but is clumsy with his words by writing some love letters for him to sign his own name to and send to Roxane. However, both are going to compete for her affection with a nobleman named De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who is a possessive asshole but who is very rich and who would be the “match” made for her under the traditional strictures of semi-arranged marriages of the day.
Edmond Rostand’s play was in rhymed verse in its original French version, something that sometimes is and sometimes isn’t retained when it’s translated into English. The dialogue here is primarily in prose and is calibrated to be very contemporary and understandable, almost to the point of being anachronistic. In place of the verse however the film has added songs that were previously composed for a Broadway adaptation that Peter Dinklage also starred in. Rather than being composed by a traditional musical writer they were written by Aaron Dessner, Bryce Dessner, Matt Berninger, and Carin Besser, three of whom were members of the indie rock band The National and Besser has worked with them as well. I’m not a huge fan of The National but I do know their sound, which is kind of a bar band blues with a touch of folk and punk and they aren’t necessarily the most obvious choice for a romantic musical set in 17th century France. The music here doesn’t sound exactly like their usual work, it’s certainly not what I’d call rock and roll, rather it’s orchestrated in much the way you’d expect from a musical but the songwriting does not scream “Broadway” and is instead more of a series of ballads and you can kind of hear some of that The National songwriting beneath the surface. Peter Dinklage is not primarily a singer but does keep up here and it probably helps that he sings with a very specific type of baritone that’s different from what you usually hear form the stars of musicals but is not dissimilar from Matt Berninger’s, which may well be why The National was brought in to write the songs in the first place.
The film was directed by Joe Wright, a filmmaker whose been fairly prominent in the last twenty years but who’s style I’ve never quite been able to put a finger on until now. I guess he’s kind of a successor to Kenneth Branagh: a British filmmaker who has some interest in making commercial genre films but who’s at his best when he’s adapting classic and contemporary works of literature. His early films like his 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice was fairly straightforward and so was his follow-up Atonement but that film had this stand-out long single shot (from before those became cliché) which pointed to things to come. As he got bolder his trick for making period pieces was to go pretty maximalist; he won’t turn things all the way up to eleven like Baz Luhrmann would but he will turn it up to an eight or a nine while most people would only turn it up to a six or a seven and that’s certainly the case with Cyrano. Wright certainly isn’t afraid of anachronism in his casting and is happy to let some theatrical elements of the original production stand on screen. Obviously he’s also staging these musical numbers which are perhaps a little more restrained than in some other musicals but which do incorporate some mass dance sequences.
Of course it’s Dinklage’s performance that this film will likely be remembered for and he’s quite good. I wouldn’t say it’s his absolute best work but he manages to have that signature “panache” during Cyrano’s more confident moments but also makes a believable transition into Cyrano the bumbling simp when Roxanne shows up. I would say that the rest of the film’s cast, while good, is perhaps a bit undercooked. Kelvin Harrison Jr. is cool as Christian but I must say that Haley Bennett does not quite have the star power to really feel like someone who’s going to have this many men absolutely losing their shit over her. Don’t get me wrong, Bennett is a beautiful woman but a more familiar face in that role might have added that certain something to make this all gel a bit more. I would also say that there’s a certain melodrama to Edmond Rostand’s original play that carries over to this which may strike some audiences as being a bit odd. The villain played by Ben Mendelsohn is a bit over the top and the story’s ending plays a bit more like an idealized Catholic notion of romance than like something I expect actual humans to engage in. Some of the contextual viewing that people bring to Shakespeare adaptations and the like may be needed to fully enjoy the film, but I did admire just how much Wright was able to bring this to life.
***1/2 out of Five
