Cyrano – a human connection made during a pandemic

Filmed in the Baroque town of Noto in Sicily, director Joe Wright undertook the project during the pandemic and describes the film as ‘a love letter to love’. Peter Dinklage (best known from Game of Thrones) as Cyrano is an expert in swordplay and wordplay. Cyrano is hopelessly in love with his childhood friend, the beautiful Roxanne, believing himself too ugly to win or woo her. Roxanne has become infatuated at first sight with Christian, a handsome new recruit to Cyrano’s regiment, whose brains do not match his looks. Cyrano helps Christian to woo her with love letters which he writes himself, pouring all his feelings for Roxanne into poetry which is artlessly recited by Christian. Dinklage as Cyrano is in turns swash-buckling, lyrical, heroic, cynical, witty and romantic. Roxanne (Haley Bennett) yearns for independence and is determined not to marry her repulsive suitor, Duc De Guiche. She outwits De Guiche when he sends a Catholic prelate (oddly played as a bumbling nineteenth century Anglican curate-type) to perform a marriage ceremony, by marrying Christian just before De Guiche arrives.

Cyrano is a film that focuses on beauty – of people, places, and feelings. Wright is a visual director and he has created a cinematic joy for which Noto deserves an award for being Noto. The film has a five-chapter structure; early parts depict a seventeenth century sun-drenched Noto with much scurrying up the steps of the pale-yellow limestone cathedral. Night scenes are all candlelit interiors, balconies, dark courtyards and alleyways. I have been to Noto, it’s unforgettably beautiful and made me long to go again. Romance threads through the film with dance, words and song. The actors’ singing is live and naturalistic, they move seamlessly from speech to song, the camera swoops and swooshes in long fluid movements. As Cyrano composes his love letters, we see the silent kneading of bread in a sun-suffused courtyard, plumes of flour dancing in the light, while bakers in dusty aprons and fencing soldiers break into balletic dance scenes. Later on, nuns in voluminous white habits and veils move silently around a porticoed convent-hospital. The war scenes were filmed not far away on the high, snowy slopes of Mount Etna. All colour and warmth have drained away, soldiers plaintively sing ‘Where I Fall’ in a dark cave before battle commences.

Dinklage is an actor who has dwarfism, no prosthetic noses in this adaptation, and the fact of his height being the impediment to love encourages us to consider attitudes to physical imperfection. Cyrano is a film about human connection made during a pandemic when restrictions on mixing were in place. Cyrano and Roxanne finally connect – too late.  How it could have been made (they created their own ‘bubble’) is intriguing. The story, told so often on stage and screen, may not have needed a new version, but the difficulty of telling someone you love them is a story worth telling in a pandemic age.

Cyrano, Universal Pictures, in cinemas now.