Peter Dinklage and his perfectly ordinary nose make for a solid Cyrano
Were his singing as strong as his acting, it might have been a great Cyrano
Film Reviews Peter Dinklage
Give 100 reasonably literate people a word-association test—“Just say the first thing that leaps to mind,” that whole deal—and the prompt Cyrano De Bergerac would elicit, in at least 90 cases, the response “nose.” Even those who’ve never seen Edmond Rostand’s classic play (first performed in 1897), or any of its numerous film adaptations, know of the title character’s prominent schnoz, which he believes makes him unworthy of his true love, Roxanne. Every movie star who’s played Cyrano, including José Ferrer (an Oscar winner in the role), Gérard Depardieu, and Steve Martin, has risked being upstaged by the prosthetic protuberance jutting from his face. Cyrano with an average-size nose would be like Dumbo with average-size ears: pointless.
Yet that’s what the latest Cyrano offers, and it works just fine. This musical version is the brainchild of theater director Erica Schmidt, who realized, a few years ago, that her husband could play the part without modifying any aspect of his body. As it happened, her husband was available, being on a breather from Game Of Thrones. The stage version of Cyrano, starring Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett, premiered in 2018; both actors have returned for this film adaptation—directed, just to keep things super-intimate, by Bennett’s life partner, Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Darkest Hour, etc.). And no sooner does Dinklage appear than it’s obvious that a darkly handsome, intensely charismatic man with dwarfism makes an ideal Cyrano.
Or he would, at least, were this Cyrano not also a musical. Schmidt, demonstrating exquisite taste, commissioned songs from members of The National; brothers Bryce and Aaron Dessner wrote the music, while Matt Berninger and his wife, Carin Besser (not technically part of the band, but a longtime songwriting contributor), penned the lyrics. What’s fascinating about this experiment in cross-pollination is that anyone who’s familiar with The National will immediately recognize their handiwork, even as the numbers come across as entirely typical show tunes. Listening to Bennett sing the “I want” ballad “Someone To Say” in the opening sequence, you can readily imagine Berninger doing the same, several octaves lower; listening to any National album afterwards, you can suddenly picture its most sweeping, grandiose tracks as elaborate musical numbers. It’s an inspired choice.
Trouble is, the film’s superb lead actor isn’t much of a singer. Dinklage doesn’t embarrass himself the way that, say, Russell Crowe did in Les Misérables; he can carry a tune, and at times seems to be attempting a Berninger impression of sorts, which actually does help. But his singing voice just isn’t powerful enough to convey the heightened emotions in which musicals traffic. Bennett, a trained vocalist—her very first onscreen role, at age 18, was as the pop diva in 2007’s Music And Lyrics—makes Roxanne an order of magnitude more impassioned when belting out her solos, whereas Dinklage’s Cyrano gets diminished every time he does the same. Nor are either of the other principals—Kelvin Harrison Jr. (as Christian, the good-looking but witless soldier whose love letters to Roxanne are ghost-written by Cyrano) and Ben Mendelsohn (sneering up a storm as aristocratic villain De Guiche)—remotely on Bennett’s level in that department.
Granted, this is a standard disappointment nowadays: Big-budget movies can’t get financed without celebrities, and few of those have extensive musical experience, so virtually every screen musical feels compromised. Still, it’s not as if Dinklage replaced a terrific but unknown stage actor. The project was conceived for him, and he captures Cyrano’s unusual mix of bravado and insecurity so exquisitely that he really didn’t require songs to push those feelings to another level. It’s almost physically painful to watch him during the crucial scene in which Roxanne confesses her love for Christian to Cyrano, who initially believes that she’s shyly declaring herself to him. The gradual escalation of his ecstasy, followed by a sudden deflation that he valiantly struggles to hide (even agreeing to protect and assist his rival), is raw meat for any performer, but Dinklage has a remarkable knack for modulating his reactions—even for the camera’s close eye—so that they’re at once theatrically intensified and richly human.
He’s not bad with a sword, either, and Wright, who’s partial to movement (whether that of actors or his own camera), orchestrates one impressive action sequence that sees Cyrano take on 10 ruffians at once, at one point armed only with a couple of torches that he’s plucked from an alley wall. Overall, though, Cyrano plays best as an intimate drama (with comedic elements) rather than as spectacle. Schmidt wrote the book herself, following Rostand fairly closely (while condensing the play quite a bit), and generates some amusing repartee. “You don’t think that [Roxanne] has the depth to look beyond your—” says Cyrano’s buddy, Le Bret (Bashir Salahuddin), interrupted by Cyrano’s ominous “Careful…”; Le Bret speedily finishes his sentence with “unique physique,” prompting an equally rapid and grudging “Not bad!” The movie’s version of the play’s famed balcony scene, on the other hand, in which Christian attempts to woo Roxanne in person while Cyrano feeds him poetically ardent lines from the shadows, lacks sparkle, in part because it has Cyrano take over the seduction in song. A musical with numbers written by The National was a terrific idea, and so was Dinklage as Cyrano. Just not at the same time.
90 Comments
Love musicals. But I don’t love The National. Damn, I’m in a tight spot.
Don’t love musicals. Don’t love The National. Don’t even love Peter Dinklage.But I love Cyrano. I too am in a tight spot.
c’mon, ya gotta dig the Dinklage.
Ah, but I don’t. I never watched Game of Thrones and I have no desire to, but among movies of his that I’ve seen, meh. And then when I see him on talk shows I feel like he takes himself a bit too seriously.
Like musicals. Like Peter Dinklage.LOVE *Cyrano*.Don’t know The National at all.Not so tight over here. Apparently, I’ve lost weight.
Love DinklageLike CyranoHate musicalsDon’t really know The NationalWhat do I win?
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Marginal marginally less than my love/love/like/who?As long as Dinklage gets to bare his head from crown to nape, and slowly, leisurely reveal the fighting trim beneath his cape – a thoroughbred from head to heel – I’ll be happy.
Cap Snaffler. Snafflers caps off any size jug, bottle, or jar. And it really, really works.
I know The National from Music From Bob’s Burgers; but apparently they’ve done some other stuff.
Fuck CyranoMarry DinklageKill Musicals
You probably know them best for “The Rains of Castamere” from GAME OF THRONES:
ARE YOU INSAAAAANEsorry The National is maybe in my top 5-10 favorite bands but ok ok no that’s cool that’s cool
Give some recommendations to this old and tell me that somehow they’re a mix of my three favorite bands: The Replacements, Big Star and The Clash.
How about The Natural, the 1984 Robert Redford baseball movie? It was the first movie produced by TriStar! You know, the studio with Pegasus as its logo.
Like musicals. Like Peter Dinklage. Don’t really know The National……defended Joe Wright for as long as possible (from roughly 2005 to 2012), fighting the good fight for the “style-is-substance” argument, will still go to bat for his Anna Karenina… and then Pan happened… …no longer pithy… sorry…
“Tight spot,” is that all? Ah no! young blade! That was a trifle short!
You might have said at least a hundred things…
Good National songs:Fake EmpireSecret Meeting Abel About Today/ Geese of Beverly Road/ Start A War
Dinklage has such a beautiful speaking voice, I wish they’d gone with a normal movie. Or let him not sing…
So Dinklage is not “normal”?
Huh? When did I say that?
yesterday, when you stubbed your toe…
No, the movie’s a musical, which is not normal — especially when you cast talented actors with a fan base…who can’t really sing that well.
It’s a pity they just didn’t write the songs so he could sprecht-sing them, like Rex Harrison did in My Fair Lady.
Normal movie, not normal actor. So a non-musical.
I think he means normal as in not a musical.
‘Cause, you know, there’s “musicals” and then there’s “normal” movies.
Yes I know, guys, I’m just messing with him, meant to be a sort of reminder to mind semantics, but I guess the humor of my post just did not show through.
This reminds me of the SNL bit with Phil Hartman as the actor who follows Yul Brenner’s record run in The King & I, and decides to play the King of Siam with a full head of hair https://snltranscripts.jt.org/86/86mbroadway.phtml
That’s such a great sketch. “What are you playing next?” “Zorba the Greek.”
I love Phil, but Nora Dunn does some of her best work in that sketch. Her delivery of “You all seem to want Yul Brynner – dig him up!” is an all-timer.
I agree that as great as Phil Hartman is, Nora Dunn steals that sketch
This reminds me of the SNL bit with Phil Hartman as the actor who follows Yul Brenner’s record run in The King & I, and decides to play the King of Siam with a full head of hairIt seems like a funny premise, unless you know that The King And I is based on the movie Annie & The King Of Siam where Rex Harrison as The King has a full head of hair.
The key is Phil Hartman. Sophie’s Choice would be hilarious if he was in it.
Well, Kevin Kline was in that (his first film role in fact), although I’ll always remember him as Otto from A Fish Called Wanda, so the movie already had a comedy champ.
you know a lot of cool stuff.
I wanted to see this as a fan of both Dinklage and Cyrano but as a musical??? I usually like musicals.
I’m not a musical fan, really, but did just rewatch Station Agent so I’m ready for more Dinklage being showcased…though having just watched the trailer, the lack of him singing feels conspicuous coupled with this review.
December 17 is a hell of a movie day, huh?
Just so long as you live in the “limited release window” vicinity, sure. Which I presume is a two-block radius around the Dolby Theater.
No, it’s also a ten-block radius around Broadway.Outside of that? You’re shit out of luck until it comes to Amazon,which will probably be very soon given it’s a MGM/United Artists movie….
This makes me wish the Soderbergh/Bob Pollard Cleopatra musical happened, I’d give my left nut for that.
I saw the trailer for this and I wasn’t sure if the singing was supposed to be bad on purpose or if they didn’t realize it. But it was tough to listen to.
This sounds pretty interesting but Dinklage’s role here has a similar issue with his Game of Thrones part in that the audience must buy that his dwarfism renders him hideous in the society in which he lives. And that’s logical enough in those fictional worlds but Dinklage must be one of the sexiest little people of all time. His hair looks especially good in this film too.
“Darkly handsome, intensely charismatic man with dwarfism” pretty much says it all. He is a very attractive man.
Only thing keeping him from being a major crush of mine is that I’m 6’7″. I mean, he’s hot as hell but that is simply not a workable visual.
It’s not like men with dwarfism aren’t also frequently ridiculed and made to feel inferior in our own society (even though it’s obviously better now than it used to be).
Cyrano de Bergerac is set in the early-mid 17th Century, around the same time as The Three Musketeers. During that time, even a handsome, equloquent nobleman suffering from dwarfism would be considered “unsuitable” to claim the hand of a beautiful woman.Tywin Lannister’s insults about Tyrion may sound excessively vicious to us now, but they were the norm until very recently….
1) Game of Thrones’ portrayals of disfigurement are severely lacking. In the Middle Ages, it was common for people to have gruesome battle scars, pox marks, etc. The idea that Tyrion/Dinklage would’ve been considered ugly barely holds up in fiction.
Tyrion’s appearance in the books is much more than dwarfism. His head is bulbous, his eyes mismatched, and his nose misshapen. He’s described as looking demonic (hence his nickname the Imp) and it’s made even worse when his face is nearly bisected during the Battle of the Blackwater which leaves him with a massive scar and missing a nose.
But to make Peter Dinklage look like that, it would require extensive makeup that would probably hinder is acting, so they just stuck with the dwarfism, left everything else out, and gave him a scar that’s barely noticeable.
Also, apparently he has a weird penis. Though to be fair, I’m pretty sure that was the first one Sansa had seen, so that and her general fear of all Lannisters may have contributed to her take on his junk.
The books certainly leaned more into the idea of disfigurement, scars, ugliness. Whereas the show got Iain Glen, super handsome man, to play Jorah Mormount who has typically described as a bear with scars. Same with Bronn and Sandor Clegane, the guys who played them were much more handsome and didn’t go through the amount of war-wounds their characters did in the books. Or Gwendolyn Christie as Brienne. And Dinklage never had to get his nose cut off, as his character did in the books. At least I guess GoT was being equal opportunity about having sexy guys in addition to the attractive ladies, as that was kind of unbalanced with all the one-sided nudity of the first season.
That’s what was great about The Station Agent — the movie never ignored that he was a little person, but unlike almost all the roles he had since, that wasn’t the most significant feature of the character. Although the recent I Care A Lot where he played a Russian mobster came close, I suppose.
Hell yeah I loved “The Station Agent” he was so engrossing on the screen in that. Loved his balance act of an introvert who wants to live alone and check out trains all day, with Dinklage’s ability to develop a rapport with all of his eventual friends in the film.
So you’re saying “more good roles for unattractive little people”?
It’s been slim pickings since George Lucas stopped making movies with Jawas and Ewoks.
“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the desert!”
Well, it’s Hollywood, a pair of glasses and a pony tail is standard for turning a beautiful girl into an ugly duckling.
In the Herve Villechaize film Dinklage was in they included a remembrance from Herve’s life that when he was a kid in france people were so angry when they saw anybody different that he would be walking home and men or boys would literally cross the street and come beat him up just for…existing whilst dwarf. Not treating people with apparent disabilities as…well…”Freaks”…is a relatively recent thing. If you call somebody an “abomination” then a “godly” person gets to do whatever they want.
I think that’s true, but it’s also about how he feels. A person might feel intensely self-conscious about some aspect of their body that no one else even notices, so maybe he does feel it makes him unworthy of love even though no one else thinks so. (Keeping in mind that in GoT you’re right, because everyone there did basically call him a freak to his face, and maybe they do in Cyrano, too.)
The only premise we are being asked to buy here is that generally straight women are not as attracted to really short men as they are to tall men, no matter how handsome that short guy is. And surely that is a truth universally acknowledged.The character does not have to think himself hideous. He just has to think that he has no chance with the hot lady compared to the tall guy.
I’m inclined to disagree that people have always thought Peter Dinklage was hot. Because no one ever talked about him being hot before he was mega-famous. And, yes, people didn’t know who he was before he was famous, so why would they talk about him… but I do think the celebrity is a factor we can’t ignore.
Would someone who saw Dinklage on the street, in a hypothetical world where he isn’t famous, think he’s hot? (Or in some country where people don’t know who he is). I don’t think so. I think their stereotypes about dwarfism would win over his conventionally attractive features.
That’s what she said. ….No, wait. That’s what he said.
Peter Dinklage is starting to specialize in playing characters without incorporating their trademark noses.
I always wondered why they didn’t give Bolivar Trask his traditional massive hooter from the comics.
Peter Dinklage IS Dumbo…as you’ve never seen him before!
or lack thereof
Peter Dinklage in the Raymond Luxury Yacht story.
Peter Dinklage’s role in the sci-fi series Threshold as a drunk strip-club loving scientist was great because it realized that he was sufficiently hot as well as cool that anyone would want to get with him regardless of his height
That was the first thing I ever saw him in. I knew the show itself was probably doomed but that Dinklage definitely had a bright future.
I remember seeing him in “The Station Agent” which had a LOT of actors who would become favorites. Bobby Cannavale (spelled that wrong I’m sure) from the best season of Boardwalk Empire, Dinklage from Game of Thrones, Roger Sterling and of course Patricia Clarkson who kills it.
Oh! And Michelle Williams who at the time I really only knew from “Dick” (which is such an under-rated gem of a movie)
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I only got around to seeing ‘The Station Agent’ recently after being aware of it for years. I love that final scene.“She doesn’t wear glasses.”“Buy her a pair. It’ll be worth it.”
It’s such a great ‘small’ movie if that makes any sense. Love that film
Totally. I love my big Marvel blockbusters as much as the next guy, but sometimes it’s nice to remember that cinema can be so satisfying when it’s just a couple of characters experiencing life for a little while.
I’m glad I’m not the only person with fond memories of that show.
Threshold was a bit of a mess but what a great cast
In addition to the great cast, I appreciated how off the rail bonkers it was willing to get.
Watching the trailer, I’m glad Wright didn’t make Dinklage speak with a faux-English accent.
It’s Cyrano. You need a couple of basic agile guys who won’t poke someone’s eye out with a prop sword and a conventionally pretty girl. That’s it. I was in a four month run of this thing, and it’s a mind-numbing bore unless you pump a LOT of humor in it. You can stage it with three people in street clothes, no prosthetics, and get out in 30 minutes, including the man in the moon bit, if you treat it like the comedy it is. I will say I will probably never be costumed that pretty again, so that was fun.This seems very twee and a lot of work for a basic gag.
I’m not sure if my original comment went through, so I just wanted to say that I found his voice really powerful — he’s not a musical theater voice, but it was so expressive and rich, so it really sold the songs for me. And I LOVED Haley Bennett’s voice, it’s so so gorgeous, I want to hear her sing everything now.
I never noticed his nose before.
I never though that Russel Crowe “embarrassed” himself in Les Mis. His singing voice is perfectly fine if you are the lead singer in a rock band, for example. He just doesn’ t have musical theatre singing chops. So he just sang the way he usually does, and it just came off as a different take than what one is used to hearing.Now, Peirce Brosnan in Mama Mia! ? That was embarrassing. Uncomfortably embarrassing.
I want to see this, and I’m sure it will be worth seeing, but the José Ferrer version is one of my favorite things ever — and it fell into the public domain at some point, so it is legally and ethically available on YouTube.
I don’t know why it’s remarkable that it works without the nose. It was never about the nose specifically, just that he had an obvious difference, which Dinklage does.
I’m really more interested in seeing how he plays the Toxic Avenger.
“listening to any National album afterwards,” oh don’t worry there’s no chance I’d ever be doing that
Peter Dinklage + The National?! I’m in.
I’d like to see a version of this story where Cyrano is a debanoir Frenchman who occasionally and unwittingly transforms into Bergerac, the gruff 1980s British TV detective.
I like Peter Dinklage as an actor, but, as a singer, he’s no Lee Marvin.