Everyman Bristol
Old and broken, Cyrano visits Roxanne in the nunnery. A kindly Mother Superior warns a flighty nun not to try to convert him. Cyrano (who knows he has taken a mortal wound) teases the nun gently, and then tells her that he would not mind if she prayed for him that night. "Do you suppose I have waited for you to give your permission?" she replies.
I mention this, because it was the single moment in this sprawling adaptation of one of the greatest love stories ever told that I felt the slightest emotional connection with any member of the cast.
There is an old theatrical story about a young actor playing a bit-part in Cyrano de Bergerac. Gesticulating a bit too wildly, he accidentally knock the wax proboscis off the lead-actor's face. He apologizes profusely in the wings, and the thespian (in some versions, Ralph Richardson) replies "Oh, these things happen, but try not to do it again. The part goes to cock without the conk."
Casting a conkless Peter Dinklage as the main character in Rostand's Cyrano De Bergerac was an inspired idea. Here is a play about a man who is clever, witty, brave, and romantic, but who assumes that no-one could possibly love him because of his ridiculous physical appearance: to wit, one nose, over-large. Dinklage can do romantic, witty and brave. He is good-looking and with a sort of puppy-faced innocence that is part of Cyrano. He easily makes us feel sorry for him; but just as easily infuriates us. And it is easy to see why he might be self-conscious and sensitive about being only about 4 feet tall.
But this film does not give us Peter Dinklage in Rostand's Cyrano De Bergerac. This gives us Peter Dinklage in an overwrought romantic melodrama based on Cyrano de Bergerac. It does indeed contain the majority of Rostand's scenes, but very few of his lines. Cyrano doesn't respond to the insult at the theatre with a lot of dwarf-jokes of his own; he doesn't delay the wicked Duke by pretending to be the man in the moon; and he doesn't end his life fighting imaginary foes. (He does fight ten men at the beginning, and pretends it was a hundred, which admittedly I rather liked.) Translations have to translate and updatings have to update, but a film quite so full of powdered wigs and ballgowns can't really afford dialogue like "Are you OK, Roxanne?"
It looks fabulous: possibly a bit too fabulous. Scenes are crowded to breaking point with period detail. The opening scene in the theatre is filled to the brim with grotesques in silly wigs, orange sellers, and a man telling his son about great acting. The opening credits include a man dressed for a masque wearing a big false nose. In one of the street scenes Cyrano crosses the path of a flock of sheep. (The terrible play in the theatre opens with a group of ballet dancers in sheep's clothing.) And the final scenes in the French-Spanish war are so foggy and craggy and desolate that I wouldn't have been at all surprised if a squadron of orcs had come over the horizon. The war has morphed into World War One as cinematic wars tend to, but since my copy of the text tells me that Cyrano was fighting at the siege of Arras, this is probably fair enough.
I assume you know the plot? Cyrano loves Roxanne. Roxanne loves Christian. Roxanne is desired by the evil Duke. Roxanne makes Cyrano promise to do whatever he can to help Christian; Christian ask Cyrano to help him woo Roxanne. Christian is good looking but inarticulate; Cyrano is peculiar-looking but poetic. So Cyrano is trapped in an honourable feedback loop. He writes letters and scripts on Christian's behalf; Roxanne thinks she loves Christian but really loves Cyrano; the one thing Cyrano can't do is tell her. All does not end happily.
The adaptation dissolves Cyrano's whole personality into his love for Roxanne -- he actually says that loving her is his only purpose on Earth. We do see him fighting a duel and taking on ten men all at once; but we don't get much sense of him as a swashbuckler, a wit, or a man of honour. We don't get the key line about Don Quixote. ("Read it? I've practically lived it.") The story ends, as it has to, with the broken Cyrano visiting Roxanne in the nunnery, and asking to read Christian's last letter. (Christian died in the war, and now Cyrano knows he is going to die as well.) Roxanne finally realises that her correspondent was Cyrano all along. (He helpfully takes his glasses off so she knows he isn't reading it off the page.) Instead of being angry with him ("You knew!") she seems to say that she always loved him and always knew the letters were from him; at any rate, he dies, partly reconciled, in her arms. "I loved you" says Roxanne "And I loved my pride" says Cyrano, and fades to black. This is quite a lot different from marching into heaven with your panache unspoiled.
I enjoyed Christian's oafishness: not merely bad at love letters, but never able to find any of the right words. ("Do you suffer from vertigo?" "No, but I am afraid of heights.") But like everyone, he seems to have too much self-knowledge: he realises what is going on much too quickly. He is a sufficiently good feminist that he tells Cyrano that they must be straight with Roxanne and let her decide for herself -- a scene which comes right at the end of the movie but which was trailed in the trailer. Remind me to talk about trailers another day.
I can forgive many sins in an adaptation. I can forgive a production in which Cyrano is a Scottish rapper, or indeed, an American fireman. What I can't forgive is the way every time a dramatic scene or some dialogue seems to be taking shape it is interrupted by a BLOODY AWFUL SONG.
I like musicals. I liked Les Miserables, which is essentially a sung-through operetta, a play in which everyone happens to sing instead of speak. I very much liked the recent remake of West Side Story, which is a pretty realistic drama into which spectacular song and dance routines are inserted. I liked that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cyrano seemed to be neither one thing nor the other. People talk, and then they sing, for no reason. The lyrics are astonishingly bland and add nothing to the drama. "Have you ever wanted something so badly you can't breath; have you ever loved someone madly?" is one of the less ridiculous lines. (It gets worse: "I can't tell you how long I've thought about her...she gonna laugh at the one who brings her love like that.") When the evil Duke marches through the street to force Roxanne to marry, or at least have sex, with him, he starts to soliloquise in an angry voice "I deserve a bit of kindness. I deserve my due respect. I deserve to be beloved just like everybody else." It is impossible to think anything other than "Son, you are no Inspector Javert."
After Cyrano's regiment are sent on their suicide mission, we have to endure a sequence of minor characters writing to their loved ones. "I have a wife at home..tell her not to cry at all. I have a girl at home...tell her not to cry at all. I have a father...tell him not to cry at all." I started to think that I would be stuck in the song for the rest of my life and the next fatality would have a family of seventeen brothers and sisters to send messages to. And I am not even sure what "heaven is wherever I fall" is meant to mean.
It's a real shame. Dinklage is very good indeed and Haley Burnett (Roxanne) and Kelvin Harrison (Christian) are not bad at all. Some of the dry one-liners raise smiles. Christian says he is going to go to Roxanne and just be himself and Cyrano snarls "I would advise against that." Roxanne tells Cyrano to be Christian's friend, and Cyrano says "I might not like him."
We needed more wit and more swordplay; some of the original play's depth and complexity; and none of the songs.
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