Cyrano: Somehow Forgettable

It is almost an achievement when a movie has so many positive aspects under its belt, yet it still manages to be a forgettable, nearly two-hour slog of a movie. It’s not even just small things about the movie that make it work well; the costuming and makeup work are well above average and worthy of the Academy Award nomination that Cyrano received. Peter Dinklage is, as always, fun to watch and a major boon to the movie. That said, there are more than a few technical issues that weigh Cyrano down to the point where it actively hinders the viewer’s enjoyment.

To start out, Cyrano is a musical with lackluster music. If the movie is going to take something that exists and adapt it into a musical, the music should be good enough to warrant the fact that it is there. If it isn’t and the audience knows that the source material was not a musical, it just leaves them wondering what the point of turning it into a musical was in the first place since the original works just as well without it.

Alongside the questionable choice to adapt the play as a musical, there are also a few moments that are not edited in the best way possible. The easiest example of this comes from an opening sword fight that Cyrano takes part in at a play. Cyrano is delivering a lengthy half-singing monologue during the fight and during a few shots that are cut together during that fight, it is obvious that he is not speaking in sync with the audio track. Obviously during the take he’s not actually speaking and doing the stunt work; at this point most people understand enough about filmmaking that they know that music is overlayed in and synced with the video. It’s like when one watches Dune, they probably know that Timothée Chalamet did not actually get chased by a massive sand worm. That said, the editing needs to be better to hide the seams so to speak.

The other thing the movie does that harms the viewing experience is that there is an assumption that the audience is already familiar with the source material before they watch the movie. Now it is true that the story of Cyrano de Bergerac is up there with Romeo and Juliet and It’s a Wonderful Life as a story archetype that has been done to death, but the movie cannot presuppose that people already know the story. Stan Lee once said “Every issue is someone’s first” and, when it comes to filmmaking, that principle still applies. There isn’t a moment where Roxanne sees Christian on screen before she professes her love for him to Cyrano. Cyrano and Roxanne’s relationship is not explained until the scene after the play where she expresses that she knows him. Information is only exposited as it is needed explicitly, however it creates situations where scenes read vastly different based on that information. Seeing a movie is not a college class, there should not be required reading to understand the plot.

While the costuming is great and the performances are great, there are enough things that would hinder one’s enjoyment of the movie that makes it worth skipping seeing in theaters. Since it is an MGM film, it will probably be moving to Amazon Prime after its theatrical run.

Rating: 7/10