Joe Wright’s latest gaslighting classical film
British director Joe Wright has a mundane name but outlandish ambition. His newest extravaganza, Cyrano, follows his grandiose style in Atonement and Anna Karenina. He re-creates the courtyards, theater, and vast battlefields of 19th-century Paris with awesome luxe in this classical tragedy, based on Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play, about the physically deformed but gallant and quick-witted soldier-poet Cyrano de Bergerac (played by Peter Dinklage) who longs to find true love.
As with Cyrano, Wright’s reach always exceeds his grasp. I initially enjoy the nerve — and sometimes the verve — of his aspiration, but not when he’s doing 21st-century, politically correct casting stunts. Cyrano no longer has a freakishly oversized nose but now is a dwarf whom Dinklage plays as both hangdog and snotty; his inamorata Roxanne (Haley Bennett) is a selfish proto-feminist free spirit; her romantic ideal is Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who, by being black, resets Rostand’s classical white European love triangle.
What’s more, Wright has adapted an off-Broadway musical written by Erica Schmidt (who is Dinklage’s wife), thus piling singing and choreography atop the already complicated story of romantic deception — Cyrano writes love letters to Roxanne for the tongue-tied Christian while denying his own romantic obsession with the far too ordinary goddess. This Cyrano is a gaslighting hero.
Cyrano lacks Spielberg’s panache in the recent woke West Side Story but plays better by benefit of its oddity. The reconceived characters no longer embody classical virtues; they have recognizably modern insecurities. Cyrano, Roxanne, Christian, and even the rapacious officer De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn) share confusion about love and worthiness that marks a godless age. This costume drama questions its own customs in the manner of a timely revival — as if transgressing theatrical conventions that no longer appeal to Millennial standards.
Back in 1987, the punk band X recorded “Cyrano de Berger’s Back,” a song about men pointedly seeking romantic surrogates as a defect of their perplexed sexual roles (X re-recorded it for last year’s Alphabetland album about current miscommunication). Wright’s not an artist in that sense; he has no contemporary antennae but does prestige projects where elaborate design and showy camera movements pass for classicism.
The only reason to make Cyrano a musical is to imitate Broadway’s Les Misérables. Each musical number is an opportunity for Les Miz-style grandiosity. The score is a series of heart-warming climaxes — intended showstoppers. But music and lyric teams Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner, Matt Berninger (of the band The National), and Carin Besser concoct a mix of hip-hop versifying and Broadway ostentation to match Wright and Schmidt’s PC anachronisms. The songs are never inspirational or uplifting like the ones in Les Miz but emphasize maudlin excess. In “Overcome,” Dinklage growls his entreaties, which Haley Bennett answers exquisitely. Her lyrical soprano sounds like genuine emotion — more pop than opera — and Wright stages this balcony duet like a vision out of Tiepolo (photographed by Seamus McGarvey). For that brief moment, the characters come into focus and Cyrano felt like a great movie, but then pop instinct reminded me it was imitating Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up.”
Wright’s taste for ersatz classical projects recalls the high-minded American filmmaker James Mangold (Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari); neither director has ever made a really good movie — only mediocre ones that get halfway into their projects’ potential.
Cyrano is no worse than Roxanne, Steve Martin’s silly 1987 attempt to turn Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac into contemporary slapstick. This film mistakes Cyrano’s self-pity for a tragedy about fate and compassion. Like the introductory rivalry scene in which Cyrano’s rapier wit and rapier skills humiliate a celebrated theater ham just to win the flighty Roxanne’s attention, Wright aims to impress, but his flamboyance and foundering romanticism miss the mark.
