“Cyrano,” directorJoe Wright’snew film adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s classic play, “Cyrano de Bergerac,” includes two innovations: It casts a dwarf actor,Peter Dinklage, in the title role, and it turns the play into a musical.
You might reasonably expect that the former change would be the riskier and more radical, but no. Dinklage is magnificent in this. He’s revelatory. He’s not onlynotthe problem; he’s a joy to watch. And it’s a pleasure, finally, to see a Cyrano without the huge, distorting nose. Here, for the first time in this role, we get to see the actor’s real face.
Oh, but the music. Oh, but the lyrics. Oh, but those awful, awful songs.
There’s a scene in “The Jazz Singer” (1927), one of the first sound films, that reminds me of the songs in this film. Al Jolson is ad-libbing, talking to the woman playing his mother, and the scene is relaxed and real. Then the father walks in, and immediately the movie shifts back to the conventions of a silent film. The acting gets stiff and weird, and it’s like welcome back to the Land of Fake. That’s what it’s like in “Cyrano” each time a conversation is interrupted by a song.
The screenplay was written by Erica Schmidt, the wife of Dinklage, whose adaptation of the Rostand play had a 2018 production at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, with Dinklage in the title role. The music was written by brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner of the rock band the National (Bryce is also one of the San Francisco Symphony’sCollaborative Partners).
故事发生在18世纪的法国,假名re Cyrano (Dinklage) is renowned as a poet, soldier and the greatest swordsman in Paris. He’s in love with a lively young woman, Roxanne (Haley Bennett), but he’s too proud (and afraid) to reveal his feelings, and so he’s stuck in the Friend Zone. He’s so stuck there that she feels free to confide to him that she is in love with someone else — a young man named Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who is in Cyrano’s regiment.
The scene in which Roxanne confesses her love for Christian is one of the best in the film, thanks to Dinklage. Cyrano believes she is about to say that she loveshim, and as he listens, his face goes through every shading of emotion, from fear to hope to happiness and, finally, to disappointment. But being such a true, intuitive actor, Dinklage doesn’t overplay the disappointment. He just takes it in, feels it, and then settles into his usual demeanor.
Eventually, Cyrano tries to clear the path for young love by helping Christian woo Roxanne. She wants love letters, poetry and romance, but Christian is a tongue-tied idiot. So Cyrano writes the love letters for him.
This time, however, it all feels a little wrong. In most versions, Christian is a sweet guy and, in this way, balances Cyrano’s brashness. But here, Cyrano is a sweet guy, too, so it’s hard to see the men as two halves of an ideal whole. Christian has nothing but good looks, and as a result, the ruse begins to seem like a tasteless trick. We don’t believe for a minute that Roxanne would like Christian if she actually knew him.
What’s worse, everybody keeps singing, and nothing will stop them. Dinklage — he can do no wrong in this movie — actually sings well (he sounds a little like Leonard Cohen), and Bennett has a nice brassy voice. All the same, as soon as anyone starts singing, it’s time to get up and go to the bathroom. Expect to go about eight times in two hours.
But Dinklage … oh, what a lovely actor. Everything he says is freshly found. Everything about his face is inviting. He never lets anything go by. It’s as if he’s thought through every moment, every fragment of every line — and then, having made that investment, he forgets the research and responds in the moment.
In the end, the most valuable aspect of “Cyrano” is that it shows that Peter Dinklage can do anything.
L“Cyrano”:Musical drama. Starring Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett and Kelvin Harrison Jr. Directed by Joe Wright. (PG-13. 124 minutes.) In theaters Friday, Feb. 25.