Few film pitches sound as much like a collection of names pulled at random from a large hat as the latest offering from Joe Wright (Darkest Hour; Atonement): this adaptation of Edmond Rostand's classic 1897 play Cyrano de Bergerac stars Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage in the titular role and takes the form of an achingly sincere, swashbuckling musical, with songs composed by members of doleful indie-rock group The National.
This Mad Libs-worthy Cyrano is not of Wright's own genesis, having been passed down to him by way of Erica Schmidt's 2018 stage production of the same name (which also starred Dinklage, her husband) – but the wrangling of such disparate elements certainly finds precedent in his filmography.
Among the mid-budget, prestige-y directors working today, Wright is notable for his bold stylistic decisions and erratic taste.
He has tackled literary giants, from his vaunted 2005 feature debut Pride & Prejudice through to 2012's Anna Karenina, as eagerly as he has staged bravura tracking shots, winding his camera through the desolate beaches of Dunkirk and the dancefloors of Regency-era England alike.
Pivotal conversations might play out in a single, intimate close-up, with the speakers' faces positioned at right angles to each other – an effect that, depending on who you ask, is evocative of either ABBA or Bergman – or in a jarring split diopter shot, with one person positioned in the foreground, the other further back, and both kept in focus.
Such florid formal touches make for a striking counterpoint to all the bottled-up emotions that characterise the historical periods to which Wright is drawn, and with mixed results.
Coming after the Hitchcockian fiasco that was Woman in the Window, Cyrano represents a return to the literary past, the arena in which the Brit has found the most solace, and the most acclaim.
But the film strays from the setting of Rostand's play: rather than attempt to recreate 17th century Paris, Wright shot on location in the stunning Sicilian city of Noto. Its architecture dates a century or so after the events of Rostand's play, to the Baroque era – from which Massimo Cantini Parrini and Jacqueline Durran's billowing, Oscar-nominated costumes also take their cues.
To be clear, the action has not so much been transposed to 18th century Italy as loosed from geographical specificity: names of streets and cities have been scrubbed from the script; an ongoing war is discussed without any mention of the enemy nation's identity.
The effect is to make the tale of Cyrano – a real-life author, soldier, and duel-enthusiast whose exploits were fictionalised most famously by Rostand – into a fable, centred on the universal themes of unrequited love and self-acceptance.
And catfishing.
As per Rostand's play, Dinklage's Cyrano harbours feelings for the beautiful Roxanne – an effervescent Haley Bennett (Hillbilly Elegy), Wright's partner, here reprising her role in Schmidt's stage production – but dare not voice them, fearing that he would be rejected on the basis of his physical difference.
Historically, it's always been an elongated schnoz that holds Cyrano back. What sets this Cyrano apart, however, is his short stature – which, like the prominent proboscises of his antecedents, proves no impediment to his talent for sword or wordplay, and yet is responsible for his aversion to romance.
Of course, Dinklage's physical difference is not a prosthetic he removes at the end of the workday. There is a corresponding shift in the dramatic temperature of the familiar story: the comedy is dialled down and Cyrano's sorrowful stoicism dialled up (something acknowledged by the actor's Golden Globe nomination), even as the relish with which he dispatches those who attack him remains constant.
Roxanne, for her part, has fallen at first sight for Christian de Neuvillette (Kelvin Harrison Jr., The Trial of the Chicago 7), a strapping new cadet in Cyrano's regiment.
Prompted by some combination of kindness and self-loathing, Cyrano offers to assist Christian in wooing Roxanne: "I will make you eloquent," he proposes. "Will you make me handsome?"
The love letters he pens on behalf of the younger, tongue-tied man become vessels for his long-suppressed devotion, though they seduce their recipient into the arms of another.
This triangulated correspondence gives rise to one of the film's more bizarre musical sequences, which finds fluttering letters filling Roxanne's parlour while she lies draped across her bed, in erotic embrace with various pieces of inked paper. "You light up desire just by describing it," she sings, and her movements are sure to leave no doubt in any viewer's mind.
The film's unabashed displays of emotion are strangely thrilling. Wright and his troupe seem to have little care – or is it awareness? – when it comes to how literal his mode of expressionism is. (Cue the single tear rolling down an unnamed soldier's face, as he stands on the battle's frontline.)
There's something invigorating, especially in these irony-poisoned times, about the director's overcommitment to simplistic metaphors, executed in such earnest as to verge on the uncanny.
The absence of satirical intent is encapsulated in the choice to use live singing rather than pre-recorded, with the occasional strained note kept in as a token of authenticity.
A little knowing silliness is nonetheless provided in the form of Ben Mendelsohn as another of Roxanne's suitors, the slimy Duke de Guiche.
An actor with a demonstrated aptitude for villainy (see Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One, for instance), Mendelsohn seems to be having the most fun on screen – sweeping through the city streets with black robe ballooning behind him, sneering through a thick layer of white face powder. (And he wrings more comedic juice from just the word "slut" than Dinklage and Harrison Jr. do from any of their banter.)
Mendelsohn's performance parries toward a Cyrano adaptation that might have been: one that leans into rather than away from the story's tragi-camp quality, and is all the more cutting for it.
Cyrano is in cinemas now.
