"To Write a Cyrano, You Need to Be a Cyrano"
That’s what I told my husband after watching Netflix’s Sierra Burgess is a Big Loser. Since he has taught Cyrano de Bergerac for some twenty years, we are always intrigued by adaptations. The first teen adaptation set at high school I ever watched, years ago, was awful. I can’t even remember the title; anyway, you wouldn’t want to see it. It tried to play its concept without ever presenting the lines. The dialog wasn’t so hot either. This makes it impossible to believe that the Cyrano character has either the skill with words or the understanding of the girl to win her. More importantly, he lacked Cyrano’s nobility, which is what makes it possible for us to like him through his constant deception.
This nobility is important. Cyrano’s insecurity about his appearance is often emphasized in teen adaptations because it’s a common teen dilemma too. But it’s often forgotten that the original character is a deeply honorable soul, which is what makes his motives less despicable. He isn’t wilfully deceiving. He actually sees himself as helping two good people in love get what they want—or think they want—and deserve. In the teen comedy with the forgotten title, the Cyrano is helping a guy get a girl in exchange for helping him win over his crush. Also, the actual Cyrano notes that the object of his Roxanne’s desire, Christian, actually has a particle of wit and thinks all he needs is tutoring in how to use it to express deep romantic feelings--and only finds out later he has no deep romantic feelings to express. In Sierra Burgess, Sierra knows the girl the guy thinks he’s courting is actually a mean and shallow girl. And while she does tutor her, it’s initially for mercenary reasons alone.
Netflix's new teen Cyrano adaptation, The Half of It, rises above these problems with a girl Cyrano who is both deep and witty and shows it. While not perfectly honorable, she does have the sympathetic higher purpose of trying to help out a depressed father. It also doesn’t force the conventional happy ending, which the original after all doesn’t have. And by doing this, it not only remains truer to the source material than any teen adaptation but brings us to an important realization about young love—that it rarely turns out to be forever love, but serves a purpose in playing a valuable role in our development: helping us to work through our confusion about who we are and what we want to be, uplift our self-esteem and keep us believing we are worthy and capable of true love.
While it doesn’t give the usual happy ending, and is rather choppy in the middle, causing the main conflict meant to wedge the characters apart to unbelievably come out of the blue and fall flat, The Half of It provides satisfaction of a different sort. It lets us see our teen selves in all our awkwardness and confusion. For even the idealized Roxanne character is deeply confused and wonders where she fits in. And all struggle to figure out what love really is and are never able to completely define it. These are very real conflicts we struggle with as we grow up, and continue to throughout our lives.
Another thing to appreciate here is the movie's promotion of reading and literature. I have a thing for YA that makes literary references; I do it myself in my own YA book, https://www.swoonreads.com/m/if-you-w.... This movie does it without being off-putting. You get exposed to higher literature whcih the writer clearly understands and appreciates and while it's not dumbed down, it focuses on aspects that are very relatable, unlike the trite treatment the great philosophers got in Sierra Burgess. A good cast delivering good lines manages to rise above some unbelievable weirdness, and in doing so capture the true spirit of Cyrano.
For the humor of Cyrano has always lain partly in the outrageousness of its plot. Everything is as over the top and ridiculous as the classic hero’s extremely unclassical nose. What makes us willing to suspend disbelief and enter Cyrano’s world is his being such an enjoyable, sympathetic character who we can respect and esteem. The Half of It gives us not just one but three of these, for even the doofus Christian counterpart has his moments of awkwardly-expressed profundity. This achievement that makes it possible to overlook not only its main character’s flaws but ultimately forget the awkward blips in unrolling its plot. Like most teenagers going through an awkward stage, the movie comes out graceful and sure of itself in the end. The ending is pitch perfect, proving the writer of this Cyrano is a Cyrano and an excellent young adult writer as well.
This nobility is important. Cyrano’s insecurity about his appearance is often emphasized in teen adaptations because it’s a common teen dilemma too. But it’s often forgotten that the original character is a deeply honorable soul, which is what makes his motives less despicable. He isn’t wilfully deceiving. He actually sees himself as helping two good people in love get what they want—or think they want—and deserve. In the teen comedy with the forgotten title, the Cyrano is helping a guy get a girl in exchange for helping him win over his crush. Also, the actual Cyrano notes that the object of his Roxanne’s desire, Christian, actually has a particle of wit and thinks all he needs is tutoring in how to use it to express deep romantic feelings--and only finds out later he has no deep romantic feelings to express. In Sierra Burgess, Sierra knows the girl the guy thinks he’s courting is actually a mean and shallow girl. And while she does tutor her, it’s initially for mercenary reasons alone.
Netflix's new teen Cyrano adaptation, The Half of It, rises above these problems with a girl Cyrano who is both deep and witty and shows it. While not perfectly honorable, she does have the sympathetic higher purpose of trying to help out a depressed father. It also doesn’t force the conventional happy ending, which the original after all doesn’t have. And by doing this, it not only remains truer to the source material than any teen adaptation but brings us to an important realization about young love—that it rarely turns out to be forever love, but serves a purpose in playing a valuable role in our development: helping us to work through our confusion about who we are and what we want to be, uplift our self-esteem and keep us believing we are worthy and capable of true love.
While it doesn’t give the usual happy ending, and is rather choppy in the middle, causing the main conflict meant to wedge the characters apart to unbelievably come out of the blue and fall flat, The Half of It provides satisfaction of a different sort. It lets us see our teen selves in all our awkwardness and confusion. For even the idealized Roxanne character is deeply confused and wonders where she fits in. And all struggle to figure out what love really is and are never able to completely define it. These are very real conflicts we struggle with as we grow up, and continue to throughout our lives.
Another thing to appreciate here is the movie's promotion of reading and literature. I have a thing for YA that makes literary references; I do it myself in my own YA book, https://www.swoonreads.com/m/if-you-w.... This movie does it without being off-putting. You get exposed to higher literature whcih the writer clearly understands and appreciates and while it's not dumbed down, it focuses on aspects that are very relatable, unlike the trite treatment the great philosophers got in Sierra Burgess. A good cast delivering good lines manages to rise above some unbelievable weirdness, and in doing so capture the true spirit of Cyrano.
For the humor of Cyrano has always lain partly in the outrageousness of its plot. Everything is as over the top and ridiculous as the classic hero’s extremely unclassical nose. What makes us willing to suspend disbelief and enter Cyrano’s world is his being such an enjoyable, sympathetic character who we can respect and esteem. The Half of It gives us not just one but three of these, for even the doofus Christian counterpart has his moments of awkwardly-expressed profundity. This achievement that makes it possible to overlook not only its main character’s flaws but ultimately forget the awkward blips in unrolling its plot. Like most teenagers going through an awkward stage, the movie comes out graceful and sure of itself in the end. The ending is pitch perfect, proving the writer of this Cyrano is a Cyrano and an excellent young adult writer as well.
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