When Joe Wright brought his new film,“Cyrano,”到了Mill Valley Film Festivalin October, he told the audience in a post-screening Q&A at the Smith Rafael Film Center that back in June 2020, when he was several months into England’s COVID-19 lockdown, he thought, “We need to make a film about people connecting, and failing to connect, and the importance of human connection and love.”

The British director of “Darkest Hour” and “Atonement” had gone through a protracted period of indulging his baroque tendencies in films like the lavish “Anna Karenina” (2012), but he admitted that after “being at home with little human contact, I felt the time was now to make something simply beautiful and from the heart, during the f—ing bleak time we were all living through.”

Wright以来一直在开发与剧本埃里卡施密特的剧本剧本，自从2018年在康涅狄格州康涅狄格州的Goodspeed Oper House上演的eDMond rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac，Schmery Apate的剧情以来。Schmidt的“Cyrano”主演了她的丈夫，Peter Dinklage（“Game of Thrones”），在标题角色中作为Lovesick英雄，他们隐藏了他喜欢的美丽女性的真实身份，他的童年朋友Roxanne（Wright的合作伙伴播放，Haley Bennett）。

While “Cyrano” has traditionally focused on a man of excessive wit and intelligence, a natural wordsmith whose insecurity about his oversize nose causes him to pen letters in anonymity, Wright felt that Dinklage’s stature (he was born with a form of dwarfism and stands at 4-foot-5) accentuated the universally relatable essence of the iconic story: Everyone fears that something about themselves is unlovable.

Wright的豪华浪漫的“Cyrano”，由Aaron和音乐音乐Bryce Dessnerof the band the National and visually dazzling tableaux all shot in Sicily (in a pandemic bubble), also stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. (“波浪”） 和本孟德尔索恩（HBO的“局外人”）。现在，在几次发布延迟之后，它最终在2月25日星期五在剧院中开放。

The day after the film’s Mill Valley screening, Wright spoke with The Chronicle at a San Francisco hotel about getting back to his aesthetic roots (his parents ran a London puppet theater), how the pandemic made this 19th century story of unrequited love feel timely and why it takes courage to put a film devoid of cynicism out into today’s world.

Q: You’ve made such compelling choices in this version of “Cyrano,” from the casting to the choice of musical collaborators. What drew you to the story?

A：我一直有一种个人依恋的the character of Cyrano, starting with seeing the (Gerard) Depardieu film version as a kid. I think anybody who felt awkward, out of place and unworthy of love or affection, as I certainly did as a teenager, would have identified with Cyrano. I was terrified of social interaction and being seen because I didn’t feel particularly cool. I was incapable of finding a girlfriend, so I loved Cyrano as a character.

Q: When you first saw Peter Dinklage as Cyrano on stage, what felt right about the casting?

A：Cyrano通常由一个大而英俊的​​演员演奏，在他脸上带着这个假的鼻子，我们知道他可以回家，脱掉鼻子，并与女士们打击。虽然，有一些如此真实的，对Pete发挥作用的原因。他对我做了非常有趣的区别。他说这不是他的事实，即Cyrano对自尊心低，更像是他不相信别人能够爱他。这对别人来说缺乏信心，而不是他自己的不等价。我以为这非常有趣。

Q: He’s ridiculed for his height in an early fight scene in the movie, but after that, it’s not really mentioned.

A：我想创建一个可以由任何高度的演员扮演的Cyrano。恢复皮特的身高，它觉得太容易了。他比作为演员的那么多。所以在某种程度上，一旦你经过过去的初始战斗，就没有真正对他的身高引用。这真的是他对自己的自己的感受。

Q: You said earlier that this film feels more authentic after experimenting with different styles and genres in some of your other films. How so?

A：这是真的。在“骄傲和偏见”和“赎罪”之后，我有点尝试过不同的类型 - 你可以说差异伪装 - 在我的电影中。I think there is a school of thought that says you should find your niche and then just repeat it, so people know what they’re getting when they come to a Joe Wright film, the way you do when you go to a Chris Nolan film, or a Tarantino or Wes Anderson movie. It’s a brand. That may be very smart, but I wanted to explore and try different things.

This is my ninth film, and I’m coming home with it. I really wanted to make a film that returned to my source, to where it all started for me, which is the puppet theater. I wanted to make a film that was devoid of any irony or cynicism, to be brave enough to put my heart out there, especially as the world seems to be getting more cynical, ironic and dangerous. That’s frightening. It’s like as an artist, to be able to do the work you have to have a very thin skin, and then to be able to put the work out there, you have to have a really thick skin.

The films I want to make in the future are all forms of fairy tale that talk of light rather than darkness. I don’t want to make the darkness the subject any longer.

Q: More love stories?

A：Yeah. Love stories that carry within them an inherent compassion for humanity, a support of each other and a tolerance of our faults and a belief in our similarities over our differences.

Q: Did the pandemic make that message feel even more important?

A：它比以往任何时候都更加相关。随着大流行，这种可怕的孤立和与其他人的联系分裂。我想我已经意识到所有戏剧都是关于连接的，或者没有连接。我并不擅长与人联系，所以我的所有作品都是关于尝试连接或故事关于尝试或无法连接的人。

If you want a happy ending, (the characters) do connect in the end. But if you carried on filming, they would probably disconnect again (laughs). A happy ending depends on where you end it.

“Cyrano”(PG-13) opens in select theaters Friday, Feb. 25.