Romantic movies have never been a genre that I would voluntarily choose to watch. With exceptions. One of these exceptions is, of course, Peter Dinklage. He’s one of the special actors enough to make me watch a romantic movie. To be honest, it was worth watching. As someone who is involved with the theater, I have always been interested in theatrical adaptations. One of the main reasons is to see their new contributions to these memorized plays that have been staged repeatedly for decades, both on stage and on the screen. For example, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth was indeed a movie that managed to add something new. It is a bit of great luck to be able to watch a movie like Cyrano in the same month. While Macbeth brings a very serious innovation in structure, Cyrano puts its signature under a brand new and very emotional work with a slight change in the characters.
Let’s touch on the subject briefly… Cyrano, our hero with courage greater than his height, fixes anyone’s wagon who challenges him with his sharp sword. Whoever comes in front of him is defeated by wordsmanship if necessary, or by swordsmanship if necessary. But there is only one battle he can’t win: Love. Cyrano, who never hesitated to jump on stage, never once dared to fight for his love. Worse still, he’ll soon be coaching someone else to win his crush. Someone else’s mouth will read his poems, and a friend of his will win the woman he loves.
Those who are involved in theater know Cyrano very well. He is the conqueror of words with his huge nose. There are special words to be written on the walls in the book that it is impossible not to be amazed by. Everyone who knows Cyrano is familiar with his famous phrases. However, this Cyrano is not the one we know. The references are so few that it will upset my dear thespian friends. This Cyrano does not have a huge nose. His nose is fine. Instead, he is a dwarf. I don’t know how big a shortcoming might be that he does not have a big nose, but being a dwarf must be a serious problem. The movie draws on drama using this slight distinction of Peter Dinklage, but it does it very successfully.
Some viewers may react by saying, “This is not Cyrano.” You are right. It’s not. I have always been against changes made in the name of political correctness. The majority are perfunctory changes. However, this sharp change in Cyrano is very successfully embedded in the story. Cyrano’s physical condition becomes the only reason why he cannot open up to his crush. The fact that they used their dwarfism without pity or exaggeration is one of the main reasons I fell in love with the movie. They avoided unnecessary suffering. But the one who turns this disadvantage into an advantage is Peter Dinklage, who has been living in that body for 52 years. The actor, whom I had the chance to know before Game of Thrones, is one of the names I have enjoyed watching for many years. His mimics, use of tone of voice, and moves; cause a very good, if not the best, Cyrano. Yes, the story itself is good, but Dinklage’s acting adds to the movie’s splendor.
I cannot say that I like musicals very much, I’ll admit. However, Cyrano is also very successful in this regard. I have to say that I burst into tears, especially in the pre-war episode. Cyrano’s final letter fight with Christian, followed by the song “Heaven where you fall”, the soldiers rushing into battle, and Christian’s death in disappointment caused all my tears to flow. I could praise the movie to the skies even for that sequence alone. It can be said at a time when I felt the magnificence in the deepest depths. I can say that it was a moment where I felt the magnificence most deeply.
Edmond Rostant has created one of the most magnificent works that could ever be written. Being able to write the scene where Cyrano reads the letter to Roxanne without looking at it must be a wonderful thing. But here again, the performer factor steps in. Played by Peter Dinklage, I felt the intensity of emotion in the scene to my bones. Accompanying such a magnificent work by such a magnificent actor is like a meteorite that you encounter once in a while. I don’t want to pass over Haley Bennett either. I never miss her movies after The Girl on the Train, I watch all of them. Although her role doesn’t weigh as much as Peter Dinklage, I have to say she suits the movie. Only the character of Christian is a little askew in the movie. He was black, but this change did not affect almost anything in the story, and even the color of his skin was never included in the discourse of the story. This was the biggest reason why I wasn’t disturbed.
To sum it up… Cyrano is a movie that puts the most magnificent words of the original work aside and focuses on the love of the main character for Roxanne. He’s still smart and brave, but he has something different from other adaptations: He’s physically separated from the others. The fact that Peter Dinklage is a dwarf becomes a reason why Cyrano can’t open up about his crush. But the movie got full marks from me because it didn’t dramatize dwarfism or skin color in any part of the movie, because it only focused on love and nice words, and because it did it quite splendidly in some places. I know I’ve been praising Peter Dinklage in paragraphs, but Joe Wright deserves a thank, maybe even the biggest one. In some movies, the director just needs to be the narrator. In this movie, too, Joe Wright is a naive narrator of Erica Schmidt’s story. He does not exaggerate or embellish. He simply describes the naivety of cannot getting together with pure love and a proud man’s loss against his honor.
Cast & Crew
director: Joe Wright
writers: Erica Schmidt (Screenplay), Edmond Rostand (Based on)
starring: Peter Dinklage, Haley Bennett, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Ben Mendelsohn
USA | 2021 | 123 MINUTES |