The National, one of the most lauded bands around, are often described as ‘left-field’ and ‘alternative’, but after the band’s Dessner brothers worked with Taylor Swift last year, and we now see them scoring a major new movie, Cyrano, surely the band is reaching the next transcendent level? We talk to Bryce Dessner about working on this huge production that stars Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett with his brother Aaron, and the news that the film’s soundtrack will also feature the latest single from The National.
Originating in Cincinnati, Ohio, The National have always written what Dessner describes as “dark rock songs” since their inception, so he agrees that all their subsequent success can correctly be described as “pinch yourself” moments.
Whether that be the Grammy nomination and widespread critical acclaim for 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me (though such acclaim is very typical for any album they release), headlining both The Royal Albert Hall and The O2 Arena in the UK, Dessner confides that these are moments that the band would have struggled to foresee in their early days.
And they keep coming – In 2020, long-term fan of the band Taylor Swift requested to work with both Dessner brothers on her folklore and evermore albums, and the Dessners are now scoring Cyrano, a big-budget production that will undoubtedly rack up huge numbers.
Not that Dessner is any stranger to film – he’s worked on some very significant projects such as the Oscar-winning The Revenant alongside Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto, and Netflix’s The Two Popes. He’s speaking to us from southern France, which feels apt considering the parisian setting of Cyrano’s source material, the play Cyrano de Bergerac.
“Cyrano was originally being developed by Erica Schmidt, who wrote the screenplay for the movie,” Dessner says, his speaking voice quite identical to that of his twin brother, Aaron.
“Erica Schmidt is a theatre director and a great writer, and she's married to Peter Dinklage. They’re big National fans. Erica had this idea to adapt the play, with Peter in mind to play Cyrano de Bergerac himself, and the songs could replace what would have been these long letters and monologues by Cyrano. So the songs occupy an interesting place, especially for a modern audience.”
Indeed, the original play has been adapted many times before, so it was surely this new approach that would have piqued Dessner’s interest. He explains that Joe Wright (the director) is very deliberate about how he shoots movies:
“We were in intense workshops and rehearsals with him all summer, working closely on refining lyrics. Then I went to Sicily, the baroque city of Noto where it was shot, and I was there on set rehearsing the actors and then developing the score before the film was shot near the architecture of Noto.
“So that definitely influenced the sound. On one side there’s all this folk music – we're playing a lot of the guitars and some of the piano. And on the orchestral side, there are these really driving strings, especially in the cellos, plenty of woodwind – this whole baroque sound. But also some electronics, modular synths as well, that are built-in lower in the music to give it some grit that Joe really liked.”
