With Joe Wright’s Cyrano, Romantic Cinema Remains Alive And Well

While there has been a vocal group about the lack of sex in movies (including myself), another element of the human experience I desperately long for more in film is romance — I’m talking about classical, heart-on-your-sleeve romance. This was a staple of storytelling for centuries, and in recent years, the idea of a desire for another person driven solely by primal emotions is just about gone, particularly in mainstream cinema. Thankfully, this is what “Cyrano” wants to deliver, mixed in with equal amounts of heartache. Nothing about this telling of the story winks at the tropes, the old-fashioned storytelling, or anything like that. “Cyrano” is earnest, sincere, and upfront about wanting to pull on your heartstrings.

Nobody is a better fit for this than Joe Wright, whose film adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Anna Karenina,” and especially “Atonement” also traffic in a similar impulse of crafting exquisite beauty on screen. He is someone able to find the allure of both the natural world and an entirely artificial one, harnessing them to simply make your heart swell. Shot on location in Sicily, Wright finds the perfect grand scale and gorgeous environment to set this classic romance, wringing every drop of emotion he can out of the material.

The central love triangle also could not have three more open and giving actors working today. Peter Dinklage, who’s rarely afforded the opportunity to play a romantic lead, approaches Cyrano with a warmth and tragedy the character is rarely given, as Cyrano was often portrayed as somewhat of a joke. Because he isn’t burdened by any prosthetic change to his appearance, we see Dinklage exactly for who he is, never shielding his humanity. His co-stars perfectly match him in that vulnerability, letting us so easily feel what these people feel.