Cyrano the Movie

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry, I'm Tracy Fie Wilson. We recently talked about the real life Syran No Diversier rec on the show, and in that episode we mentioned the Edmond Rostand play from and how that piece of writing has defined the image that most of us have of Syran No Diversiera rec And that play is an interesting piece of history in its own right because it's been staged theatrically innumerable times, made into movies, even adapted as a ballet. And there is a new film adaptation of the play which is out as a February And I recently had the opportunity to talk to some of the people who made the film and asked them their thoughts on why syran No story endures. And this doesn't quite fit our normal format for a show, but I thought it was really interest thinks. So this week you are getting this as a bonus episode. And Holly did all of these interviews. I am as eager to hear them as I'm sure listeners are. So the first thing Holly asked each of them was whether they would consider themselves history buffs, And here were their answers. No, no, not at all, history of film, maybe history in general. No no, no, no, no, not at all. I love history, but I'm not a scholar. Yes, okay. Those voices you just heard were Hayley Bennett, who plays Roxane in the film, Joe Wright, who directed it, cinematographer Shamus McGarvey, and Erica Schmidt, who wrote this adaptation from Reston's play. But there was one person that I interviewed that I did not ask that question of because to me, the answer was going to be pretty obvious, and that was choreographer Cede Larbi's or can we. I knew that his ballet and dance background meant that he would have studied history in his time, and he has also choreographed pieces that have historical inspiration. So I asked him instead how history had shaped his career, and here's what he had to say. Well, I mean I grew up in Belgium, uh so, and my education was always kind of linked to Greek tragedy and the Romans and everything that was connected to the way Europe kind of developed. So so for sure, I think I grew up with a deep sense of understanding that the here and now isn't the only thing that defines the here and now, that the here and now is defined by everything that came before. So next to that, I think I was living in Antwerp, we're kind of surrounded with paintings and elements that remind us of a specific past, like let's say, the sixteenth century or things like this, and and so I definitely have always been kind of attracted also as a human being and as an artist, to the past. Everyone that Holly talked to, though, talked really passionately about history when they chatted, and one of the really interesting takes on engaging with history came from director Joe Wright, who said he didn't think of himself as a history buff at all. That doesn't really hold up when you look at his work. In case you haven't connected the dots on his career, he's actually directed a lot of films with historical settings, so there's The two thousand five, Pride and Prejudice, Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Darkest Hour. So Holly asked him about what draws him to historical stories, and his answer was about his father. I guess one of the reasons why I've always been interested in history is because my dad was sixty five when I was born, um, and so he had lived a lot of life before I knew him, you know, and so I was I was intrigued by what the world had been like when he was a boy or a young man, you know. I think that's why I've made a couple of movies set during the Second World War. You know, he was around, and so to try and understand the world in which he lived. And then I've just kind of kept on going back and back and back. This film project, though, all actually started with an adaptation for the stage that Erika Schmidt wrote. She also happens to be married to the star of the Syrano divergerec film, Peter Dinklage, And I asked her what made her want to take this hundred and twenty year old play and try to make it new. I love the play very much, and I wanted to kind of ask it some questions, to kind of engage with it in a dialogue, because the restand is a play is about love, but the way that he speaks about love and then everyone says, oh gosh, it's so beautiful, the way you're talking about love within the play. I found kind of frustrating. Was I wanted it to be less I guess. I wanted it to be as elegant as a poem and less verbose, I guess. And then I was curious, It's almost the same thing, but it's just a different part of the play, this idea that he wears this large fake nose, wears a large fake nose, and then then he spends so much time talking about how hideous his noses, and then we sort of agree, we laugh because we know it's fake, and that to me felt kind of like a lie um And so I thought, what would it be if he didn't wear the nose, or ever to say what it is that he finds physically unattractive about himself. So when Holly and I were first talking about the possibility of interviewing these folks and having a bonus episode of the show, one of the things that kept coming up was the filming location, which is a Unesco World Heritage site, and every single person from the cast and the crew that Holly spoke to had just incredible passion about this location. It was in Noto Sicily, again, a Unesco World heritage site in an area that was destroyed by an earthquake in the early sixteen nineties and then was rebuilt in the Baroque style starting in the remaining years of the seventeenth century. They all had an appreciation for the history of this location. Shamus McGarvey talked a lot about how being in that specific space felt almost like this incredibly perfect, massive back lot. Well, I mean not all is, as you say, the most beautiful place. The place actually and it's it's gorgeous Baroque architecture sort of inspired the way approach to photography. That's the strange thing. When I first visited, I'd never been to Scilly, even though I live in Tuscany, and when we went there, it was immediately clear how we should move the camera. The quality of the light, all those things. Everywhere you look is just so worn and rich and and sort of ancients were not quite incient, but I think sixteen ninety two is when the buildings of Otto were built after a terrible earthquake in the world. Built in a city plan, so it actually feels it has the coherence and the cohesion of a back lot stage because it feels like it's been done by the same designer Production designer sixteen ninety two, and that lends it a sort of continuity visually. Choreographer Serko, we talked about how the spaces they worked and felt like they were just inviting the team to create art. We were developing things sometimes in Antwerp, certain things I was sending towards London to for Joe to to to look at. So I was I was developing things. Uh. And then when I came and arrived in Italy, in and in not to specifically, I visited all the all the spaces, and I realized, oh, I have to change a lot of things and and kind of adapt to the to the surrounding to make sure that whatever we were doing was adapted to distable of was adapted to that space in which they were all going to be fencing. So there was a lot of adjusting, but it was it was lovely because it was as if the spaces were really welcoming us, as if they had been craving humans to be in there, being active and creating arts. So it's really I think those those spaces, they are beautiful and sometimes they are too abandoned. They are actually too you know, they are and you can feel this. I feel like when you go there as a you know, if you're a little bit spiritual in this, you kind of feel like it's asking us to to be creating rituals within it. So it was a real pleasure to see it having all this furniture coming in and suddenly the space became alive again and started to have a purpose and felt like a home in which all these things could indeed happen. And here is are Ka Schmidt talking about the location and having her writing being performed there. Because it was my first frien play, I just didn't I didn't get the scale of it in the way that I did when I stood on Mount Etna and watched all the soldiers seeing wherever I fall. Although this is kind of amazing, you know. Probably asked Shamus mcgarby what the biggest challenge was working on a historical location when every space that's the theater and the houses in the battlefield, all of that, they each need to have a very different look, as well as what his favorite aspect of working in Noto was, And here's what he said, Well, definitely the most challenging was Montetna. Filming up there at sixteen feet or nine feet. Eventually we had to go down lower at some point because of the snows were sentenced on their but it was immensely difficult at altitude for for all of us, for the crew moving sort of lugging boxes around. You know, the kind of instability of the land meant we couldn't really track or move the camera. So we had to adopt more static approach to that, which sort of suits, and we went for a very We pulled all the filtration off the camera that we've been used prior for those more painterly moments earlier in the film, and we went for something, as you say, stark and lithographic and really to show the veracity and the truth of war. Um. So that was the but my favorite parts. I actually really liked the end, which I don't want to put spoilers for your listeners, but at the end of the movie, it's three years later and Sarah comes back Roxanne's in the convent. And when we went there to this location, a church on the top of the hill, it was extraordinary the way the sun was coming through. And I took a photograph two photographs, and the first one I sort of accidentally overexposed it, and Joe and I saw it and said, look, this is the way to go on this because it feels sort of heavenly and it feels divine in some way, and it feels like you're in a kind of a dream space between life and death, and and that was I really enjoyed doing it, and I love when a mistake leads to a creative decision. One of the other things that he mentioned during our talk was how technology has helped make filming in historical locations easier because led lights are inherently less dangerous than some of the previous equipment they've used, which is just a nice, little interesting bit of trivia. But I also love that Hailey Bennett told me what she thinks should really be in the history books about not To It was a dream come true, having kind of emerged from isolation and entering this, this incredible Baroque like masterpiece. It was a really liberating experience in and of itself, given that we had spent so much time in lockdown. This was during the first lockdown, and then you know, Noto is this incredible gem baroque masterpiece of the city. We discovered it because Sarah Greenwood went a few years ago while she was on a scout for cannoli. Apparently they have the best cannoli in the world there as well, which should also be in the history books. I should think, um food is very important. She also talked about how unique this set was because of the time in current history when it was being filmed, and essentially we had the great fortune to have no to as our back lot, which was a very rare time, you know, it was It was a very I think, you know, because it was such a rare time in history. There was no tourism. You know, people were hidden away in their homes and the streets were empty, and we had free reign of noto. We we got the keys to the city, and so we were able to create a bubble in this beautiful place and kind of it creates a world of fantasy that is very transportive. And speaking of Keys to the City, Joe Wright also told me this incredibly fun story about one of the locals who helped them out while they were on location. I haven't spoken about him. There's this lovely character called everyone called the Professor or the Prefatory, and this old guy wondered about the city with this enormous bunch of keys, right and like the biggest bunch of keys you've ever seen, none of them labeled um. And if ever you said, oh sorry, I'd like to I wonder what's in this building. This could be interesting or maybe there's a view from the rooftop here, and he was said, Ma mo mentor, and he'd find a key and then let us in. And he had literally the keys to the city. We later found out that he wasn't really like a professor. He was actually the physical education and structure at the local high school, but he was the guy who had been entrusted with the keys to the city. Because this film was made during the pandemic, the production was incredibly small. They created a production bubble on location, and as a consequence, they created a group that was really similar to historical theater troupe. Here's director Joe right on that. Yeah, we created this troop of a hundred and twenty I think local extras who had a wonderful time and they were part of our bubble, and we used them as aristocrats in the theater, or bakers in the bakery, or soldiers up Mount Etna. They were a little you know, traveling troop, and yeah, it was a kind of it felt like a theater company. It felt that like that kind of company atmosphere where we were all defiantly making something of beauty in a bleak world. Throughout all of these conversations that I had, I kept wondering what it is about Restand's play that brings creators and audiences back to it over and over and over. So I asked everyone from the production that I spoke with what they think is the reason, and I got a really fun array answers. The film is about human connection. It's about our inability to express or accept love. I think that's such a universal experience, human experience, and it's one of the most famous love triangles in history. And there's two things I think the I think the idea of the Nose is a genius metaphor for all of our experience of feeling unworthy of love, and so it has a kind of level of specificity that makes it universal, and so I think I think that's a genius metaphor. I then also think that the play originally is structurally perfect. Uh is solid as a rock, and so that's something I I found working on the adaptation is that the place structure works and it's solid, and therefore it gives you a foundation from which you can spring and and and imagine and and go to different places. I think it's linked to the characters incredible talent on the one side, and on the other side, an inability to be completely honest with what he feels the deepest, you know, like it's all of us can relate to the idea of hiding our deepest desire. So what you want the most is the thing that you dare not say is the thing you will hide. And as you're hiding it, it might never come to pass. So it's this very difficult tension between daring to speak out your dream or not, which for him is to love Hoxham and for her to love him. And I think that that is something very recognizable. I think it's the lying. Joe Wright had some additional thoughts about why this story was so important for him to tell at this moment in our lives, and it makes it really clear how turning to history can sometimes feel like the best way to express and consider the things we're dealing with in our own lives. I guess the story is about human connection our inability to connect, sometimes a failure to connect, and our need to connect, our need and fear of intimacy of being seen. And that felt extremely pertinent, you know, sitting in lockdown in my house where you know, at the time when when when human connection had literally been severed, to make a film about the wonder of human in action and the importance of human connection felt really really important. It's also a story about difference. It's about not seeing beyond our differences and understanding that intrinsically similarities are greater than our differences. And that also felt like something that, even with the pandemic aside, I felt like something that the world has been trying to battle recently, because I think so often these days, but we're being forced to look at each other's differences rather than our similarities. Many many thanks to Erica Schmidt, Hayley Bennett, Joe Wright, Shamus McGarvey, and City Larbi Shakoe for chatting with me for this bonus episode and just for creating this incredibly lovely film. Our producer, Casey and I got to see an advanced screening of Syrano de Bergerec and I can honestly tell you that I absolutely loved it and I found it ex raordinarily beautiful and it is out now if you wish to see it, and now you will have the behind the scenes knowledge on how the people behind it thought about this project and its history. And I hope you've enjoyed this and that you also enjoy the film. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. 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