It’s Awards season and there is perhaps no one having a worse season than Director, Joe Wright. With his recent remake of The Woman In The Window releasing to an overwhelmingly negative reception and obtaining 5 Razzie awards including Worst Director, Wright’s newest release Cyrano came close to turning the tide with a Best Comedy/Musical Golden Globe nomination, but has ultimately fallen short of much other awards recognition.
Cyrano tells the classic story of Cyrano de Bergerac, played by Peter Dinkledge, a French poet who is madly in love with an old friend named Roxanne, played by Haley Bennett, however Roxanne has eyes for another, much taller, yet less eloquent, man named Christian, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr. Unable to express his love out of fear of rejection and ridicule, Cyrano decides to help Christian win the heart of Roxanne by writing love letters on Christian’s behalf. What could possibly go wrong?...
Despite not capturing the attention of the academy, Cyrano is by no means the failure The Woman In The Window turned out to be. The film features beautiful production and costume design, the latter obtaining the films only Oscar nomination. Not only that, but Cyrano does display rather strong theatrical performances, from Peter Dinkledge and co, even if their collective singing ability of its cast matches that of Mamma Mia and yes, Peter Dinklege is the Pierce Brosnan of this movie, however Dinkledge’s vocals are at the bottom of my list of problems with this film…
I understand that Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person who had a play written about him that has been remade many times on many different formats and will probably be known best as the original Hunchback of Notre Dame story, which once you realise it pretty much is, Joe Wright’s adaptation feels rather bland and unoriginal by comparison. It’s a Shakespearian Hunchback of Notre Dame and that’s about all it is, Wright doesn’t put any kind of unique spin on it like Baz Lurhman did with Romeo + Juliet or even what Joel Coen just attempted with The Tragedy of Macbeth…
Despite Wright’s uninspired direction, perhaps my biggest issue with Cyrano came down to the character of Roxanne. Haley Bennett did a great job in the role, however I found her character to be rather one dimensional and incredibly hard to like and considering she is the reason anyone does what they do in this film, this is why I personally couldn’t connect with the film as a whole. My favourite moment of the entire film was the ‘Heaven is wherever I fall’ song which was sung by three soldiers as they mail letters to their loved ones just before they are sent on a suicide mission, why is this my favourite moment? Because in that one song I grew to care for those men more than any of the other characters I had spent 2 hours with. There has to be something wrong with your film when the biggest pro highlights an even bigger con…
Not without its merits, Cyrano features conventionally beautiful production design, theatrical performances you’d expect of a period piece, as well as, a surprisingly moving song in the third act; however that isn’t anywhere close enough to redeem Joe Wright from the uninspired slump he seems to reside in currently. Cyrano isn’t a bad film, it just isn’t a memorable one and I’m not sure which is worse…
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