Cyrano (2021) will sing its way towards your heart, but maybe not all the way
Everybody knows the story: An ugo loves a woman, but she loves the quarterback so the ugo becomes a poet police officer and saves the woman he loves by killing a tower full of thieves masquerading as terrorists. Tale as old as time. Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage and some other people, is a musical, something I do not think the advertising liked to talk about to the point where some guy in the back row said, "The fuck" when the singing started.
The story is one you have heard before, no kidding, and not just the Steve Martin classic Roxanne. A guy with brains pairs with a guy with a pretty face to woo the woman of both their hearts. Cyrano writes beautiful love letters that Roxanne craves while Christian is a handsome soldier. The highlight of the story in most iterations, be they stage or sitcom, is the balcony scene where Cryano coaches Christian with love lines for Roxanne and generally everything works out after some comedy. This iteration is based on the stage play and has taken most of the comedy out, leading to a general mopey sad bastard feeling throughout. The movie slams home the moral: love at first sight is dumb and life is short so just kiss da girl, as a crab famously once sang.
Director Joe Wright and his crew paint the scene of 1600s France well. The dresses and sets are beautiful. Roxanne flares in vibrant colors while warm candle glows fill the screen. The effect of this puts the capital "R" in Romance. The whole movie feels cinematic rather than the usual stiff locked down camera watching folks dance around. I especially liked the choreography and the movement of the camera around slow, sensual dancers.
Then… Look, The National are a great band, but the earworm in my brain was not the beautiful "Someone to Say" or even the haunting "Wherever I Fall," but other songs that reminded me of the soundtrack. Specifically Plain White T's "Hey There Delilah" and I do not understand my brain any more than you do, but I will say that it rejects what it does not care about and often finds similar known quantities to engage with. I have listened to the soundtrack since watching the movie and enjoy it, but when humming songs around the house I start with "Someone to Say" and end with Erasure's "A Little Respect." To give some props, "Wherever I Fall" stood out as both not including the main cast but containing the richest thematic elements of longing for someone and writing letters to tell someone the simplest truths while faced with possible death. That song and its placement in the narrative is so good that it is almost out of step with the rest of the Hamilton wannabe and sad bastard songs.
Gotta end this by praising the cast. Dinklage is so fucking good that I believed his teenage-esque angst throughout most of the movie. Haley Bennet is a bright ray of sunshine and Kelvin Harris Jr. shines as the earnest and hopeful suitor. The three of them rotate in a love triangle that works on every level. Ben Mindelsohn vanishes into another role and has a damn good villain song, even if I could not tell you what it is even after listening to it a few times.
Overall, had West Side Story and Studio 666 not come out in the last six months, Cyrano would have made my top two musicals of the year. As it stands, its solid yet morose adaptation that lacks the original play's ability to blend the capital "R" Romantic tendencies with humor and ironic detachment.