CYRANO

Stars: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn, Bashir Salahuddin and Monica Dolan.
Writer: Erica Schmidt
Director: Joe Wright

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ½

Director Joe Wright does ‘soaring lit-based romance’ like few others. He made Atonement - the last film to really make me gulpy-sob - as well as gorgeous-looking and emotion-filled reworkings of Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina. These are the stories that engage his artistry and passion for storytelling like none of his other films. He did Hanna, The Soloist, Darkest Hour - all fine films but works that felt like a hired gun was at the helm.

Cyrano may be the best Joe Wright film yet. It is, of course, a reworking of Edmond Rostand’s romantic classic Cyrano de Bergerac, a favourite amongst literary academics but probably best known to modern movie audiences as the inspiration for the beloved 1987 Steve Martin film, Roxanne. In 2022, Wright has worked with writer Erica Schmidt to create a 17th century Parisian spin on the story of the swordsman/poet who pines for the beautiful Roxanne but who doubts she would fall for someone as physically unappealing as he.

Instead, she falls for one of Cyrano’s new regiment, the guard Christian, a strapping specimen but not the shiniest sword in the battalion. So Cyrano agrees to be his voice - mostly in letters, but also literally on occasion - to help his beloved Roxanne find true love, even if it means his own longings must go unrequited.

In a year of big, brassy, lushly orchestral musicals, like West Side Story and In the Heights, the original music, composed by The National and the lyrics, written by Matt Berninger and Carin Besse, is often understated to the point of being almost lost in Wright’s lavish production. But the songbook works as a subtle add-on to the characters in Cyrano, not a grand flourish in a sing-for-singing’s sake kind of way. Some of the film’s deepest emotions are found in the repeated refrains of the central tune, ‘Madly’, or in Roxanne’s declaration of her depth and strength, ‘I Need More’.

The Cyrano of legend was cursed with a big honker, but in Wright’s version he is played by Peter Dinklage, the little person star of Game of Thrones (and that unforgettable cameo in Elf). Dinklage is married to Schmidt, and she crafted the script to suit not only her husband’s dwarfism but also his towering talent and on-screen charisma. His performance as the forlorn, faultlessly romantic Cyrano is arguably the greatest ever screen incarnation of the figure, putting him ahead of such actors as Gerard Depardieu, Jose Ferrer and Christopher Plummer.

Dinklage’s scenes with his Roxanne (the luminous, spirited Haley Bennett) are both lovely and heartbreaking; as Christian, Kelvin Harrison Jr brings depth to a role that is very often underserved in adaptations of the text. And in fourth billing is one Ben Mendehlson, doing that thing he’s been doing for the best part of a decade now, taking a small villainous role and making every frame of film unforgettable.