Cyrano: Love's labours lost

Cyrano (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.25.22

We’ve seen two noteworthy big-screen versions of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play up to now: José Ferrer’s Oscar-winning turn in director Michael Gordon’s modest 1950 American translation; and Gérard Depardieu’s robust, Oscar-nominated work in director Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s far more lavish 1990 French adaptation.

 

Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) has long loved Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar, but kept
silent out of the fear that she'd find his worship comical or insulting. She, in turn,
has eyes only for a new King's Guard recruit glimpsed briefly in a crowd.

Nor should we overlook star/scripter Steve Martin’s kinder, gentler rendition in 1987’s Roxanne. (Which is to say, nobody dies.)

Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano is adapted from Erica Schmidt’s new 2018 stage musical, with Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett reprising their starring roles; Schmidt also handles the script. And while Rostand’s story seems an unlikely candidate for musical resurrection, the same could have been said of (among others) Les Miz and Evita … and “unlikely” certainly didn’t damage their popularity.

 

That said, this Cyrano is an awkward beast. Many of Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s songs aren’t memorable, and several interrupt/interfere with the on-screen action in the manner of all clumsy musicals.

 

On the positive side, Dinklage owns this film; his performance is a masterpiece of carefully nuanced expressions and body language. He puts heart and soul into even the most trivial of lines, and his frequent displays of silent, earnest anguish — it’s that sort of story — are heartbreaking.

 

Bennett’s work is similarly charismatic, albeit on a different level. Her Roxanne shimmers with giddy, joyous delight at everything she encounters: most particularly when she swoons over her desire to be swept away by passionate, soul-deep love.

 

Wright’s touch, with the accomplished assistance of frequent cinematographer colleague Seamus McGarvey, is stunning. All of their visual tricks are in evidence: the sliding walls and lengthy tracking shots; the arresting framing of scenes and characters; and the expansive, ethereal depiction of war. (Think back to their work on 2007’s Atonement.)

 

When things work here, they work extraordinarily well.

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often enough.

 

The setting is Paris, the year 1640. Roxanne attends a stage performance in a theater hosting an audience that ranges from the cream of Parisian society to thieves, pickpockets and cutpurses. She’s escorted by the powerful Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who craves her in a way that is slimy from his first words; rashly heedless of this, Roxanne flirts as a means of enjoying his wealth and status, while having no intention of marrying him.

 

She chances to lock eyes with newly arrived King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), buried within the rabble-rousing theatergoers. The connection is instant and electric, but he’s swept away by the crowd.

The Dig: A captivating excavation

The Dig (2021) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for brief sensuality and fleeting partial nudity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.26.21

Director Simon Stone’s well-seasoned character drama, available via Netflix, is a thoroughly absorbing slice of old-style British filmmaking: a fascinating, fact-based story inhabited by engaging characters, set in England’s luxuriously verdant countryside.

 

After a harrowing reminder that amateur excavation can be quite dangerous, Edith Pretty
(Carey Mulligan) makes sure that archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) has
suffered no more than a terrible fright.

The countryside in question is Suffolk, the year 1939: just as Britain is battening down the hatches in anticipation of war with Germany. Odd, then, that widowed aristocratic landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) chooses this moment to investigate the large barrows (burial mounds) that dot her 526-acre Sutton Hoo estate (but, well, the actual Pretty did just that).

 

Such mounds were prevalent throughout much of the United Kingdom at this point in time, and it was accepted wisdom that — if they contained anything at all — the contents likely would date back to the Viking era. Edith has no reason to expect otherwise, but even Viking artifacts would be worthy of museum preservation.

 

She hires local archaeologist/excavator Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to investigate; after surveying the various mounds, he settles on a particularly large one. The digging is arduous, painstaking and slow, even with the help of a few estate workers. As the days and weeks pass, with Edith and her adolescent son Robert (Archie Barnes) taking an active interest — and since Basil is living on the estate — he becomes a welcome part of the family.

 

That’s no small thing, since the working-class Basil is akin to a servant himself. But Edith clearly gives no thought to that sort of thing: a deliberate contrast to the way Basil is regarded as “lesser” by his archaeological peers, since he’s self-taught after having left school at age 12.

 

Nothing is quite as condescending as British class snobbery, and Fiennes does a marvelous job of imbuing Basil with quiet dignity and patient resolve, when confronted by it. His deepening bond with Edith and Robert notwithstanding, he also tends toward obsession, ignoring frequent letters from his wife, May (Monica Dolan).

 

Basil becomes convinced that these Sutton Hoo barrows might pre-date the Viking era (eighth to 11th century): in fact, might be Anglo-Saxon (as early as the fifth century). Naturally, his disdainful colleagues dismiss this notion.

 

Then Basil finds some iron rivets. A ship’s iron rivets. (Bear in mind, we’re well inland.) Only figures of immense merit — such as kings — were buried with their ships.

Eye in the Sky: A riveting real-world thriller

Eye in the Sky (2015) • View trailer 
4.5 stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, profanity and violent images
By Derrick Bang

Guy Hibbert’s thoughtful screenplay has the unsettling intensity of an immaculately crafted stage play.

Helen Mirren, as Col. Katherine Powell

Indeed, I can see this being a great play, even though its primary characters are spread out across the globe. An imaginative director could handle that detail, much the way Gavin Hood has choreographed this big-screen drama with such authoritative snap.

Eye in the Sky is a taut, up-to-the-minute geo-political thriller that belongs in the company of 1960s Cold War classics such as Fail Safe and Seven Days in May, and more recent efforts such as Thirteen Days and Munich. At its core, Hibbert’s script — which he wrote back in 2008, making it even more cutting-edge — is a study of actions and consequences: to what degree, if any, a desired end justifies the means to obtain it.

Hibbert’s approach is what makes the result so riveting: This is a “process thriller” very much in the mold of 2011’s Margin Call. That film gave us a talking-heads glimpse of the primary players at a Wall Street investment firm who, during the course of 24 hours, watch helplessly as their own previous actions precipitate the 2008 meltdown. You’d think such back-room financial commentary and analysis would be boring, but that was far from the case; the excellent cast brought compelling tension to every aspect of writer/director J.C. Chandor’s script.

As Margin Call was to the 2008 economic crisis, Eye in the Sky is to digital-age drone warfare.

British Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), waking early one morning at her cozy home in Sussex, assumes her decidedly un-cozy duties at a nearby military base. This is likely to be a crucial day: She has been tracking, for six years, a particularly notorious British citizen-turned-terrorist — a radicalized young woman — who is expected to attend a meeting at an Al-Shabaab safe house in a bustling Nairobi neighborhood.

As a bonus, this target is expected to be in the company of at least one other terrorist ranked high on the British/American “most wanted” list.

The developing situation is being monitored from the sky by a surveillance drone piloted by American soldiers at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, and at ground level by Nairobi anti-terrorist personnel. Facial recognition identification, if such an opportunity arises, will be confirmed by an American military analyst stationed in Hawaii. All are in constant contact with Powell.

She, in turn, passes this intel along to her commanding officer, Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman, in his final performance), who is spending the day in a London conference room, where he shares these same details with upper-echelon British government overseers. The intention, at every moment, is to follow protocol and chain of command, while adhering to legal justification.

All these players are assembled to monitor a pre-approved “capture mission” that will be coordinated by the Nairobi ground troops. Powell, in charge of the operation, waits only for verification that her targets have arrived.