Winter's Tale

Akiva Goldsman's Winter's Tale gives us a handsome physical production, dialogue that sounds like it was composed by a Hallmark card, and a plot that reads like it was dreamed up in a loony bin.  It's a romantic fairy tale for the most part, but there are elements of it that are just so flat out bizarre, I wonder if Goldsman knew what kind of film he was making.  I'm not recommending it, but at the same time, I recall the film with a small amount of guilty pleasure.  Hey, at least it's not as boring of a romance as Labor Day.  If I had to choose between Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin getting seductive over a fruit pie, or Colin Farrell riding to the rescue on a magical white flying horse, I'll take the horse every time.

The plot is borrowed from a popular novel by Mark Helprin, and is set during two different time periods - 1916 and 2014, to be more precise.  In both time periods, we follow the same hero, who does not age at all during that nearly 100 year time span.  Said hero is the 21-year-old Peter Lake (played by the 37-year-old Colin Farrell).  In 1916, Peter is a small-time thief who is on the run from his former crime boss, Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe).  Pearly looks and talks like an early 20th Century gangster, but in reality, he is a demon from the underworld, who answers directly to Satan himself, played here by Will Smith. (Yes, that Will Smith.) What Peter doesn't know is that he plays a role in the battle between Heaven and Hell.  It's Peter's destiny to initiate a miracle, and Pearly wants to make sure that never happens.  Helping Peter out for the side of God is an angelic white horse, who can sprout magical wings and fly when it is in danger.  This is just one of many fantastic elements of the story that Peter (and pretty much everyone else) seems to take in stride and not even question.

While hiding out from Pearly, Peter breaks into the home of newspaper publisher Isaac Penn (William Hurt), with the intent of stealing a few valuables for cash before he flees the city.  But the house is not as empty as Peter thinks, as Isaac's angelic and sickly daughter, Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay) is there.  Peter is immediately captivated by Beverly, who is suffering from that famous Hollywood disease that makes women more beautiful as they approach death.  The two hit it off, and before long, they are exchanging flowery dialogue that cynics in the audience will love to rip to shreds.  But can they stay together?  It does not take long until Beverly is in danger of succumbing to her illness, and Pearly is getting closer each day.  Through plot developments that I must be vague about here, Peter somehow becomes immortal, and must wander the Earth until it is 2014, and he is now an amnesiac with no memory of who he is, or how he got this way.

This is where the second half of the plot kicks in, with Peter trying to unlock the clues of his past with the aid of a reporter for a local newspaper (Jennifer Connelly).  The reporter has a sweet little girl dying of cancer, and it seems almost as if Peter will have to repeat the past, and watch someone he loves die.  Not only that, it seems that Pearly is still alive also after all this time, and wants to finish things that started almost 100 years ago.  As a romance, Winter's Tale is pretty shameless in its sentimentality, with all of its talk of eternal love, guardian angels taking physical form to protect young lovers, and people being reborn as stars in the sky.  This is obviously intentional on the part of the screenplay.  What doesn't work so well is all the mysticism and supernatural elements of the story.  None of it is explained very well, if at all, and Goldsman seems to just keep on wanting the audience to just go with whatever is happening up on the screen.  Maybe this would be easier to do if the characters actually reacted to these mystical happenings.  You would think climbing on the back of a horse, who suddenly appeared on the roof of your New York apartment for no reason, only to have it go flying through the sky and take you on a whirlwind flight through Times Square would elicit some response from the Jennifer Connelly character, but she says nothing while this is happening, or even after.  Those New Yorkers, so jaded.

It takes a certain kind of person to enjoy a movie like this.  You have to be willing to accept that two people can instantly fall in love, even though they know little to nothing about each other.  You have to look at the image of the hero riding on a white horse to rescue the damsel from the villain in the nick of time, and not roll your eyes.  With the right script and tone, I think I could accept these ideas.  I actually wanted to get swept away in the romantic fantasy.  Despite a game effort from Farrell and Findlay in the two lead roles, they never generate enough sparks together to make us want to get behind the couple.  The main thing that did hold my attention, aside from the increasingly bizarre plot, was the look of the film by cinematographer Caleb Deschanel.  His snowy landscapes are a marvel to look at, as are some of the old time mansions and structures during the first half of the film.  If you can somehow manage to drown out the dialogue, and just focus on the visuals, you might find yourself enjoying the film more.

Winter's Tale obviously wants us to get swept up in a romantic mood, but the movie doesn't try hard enough to generate that mood, so instead, the audience is kept at a distance.  An audience kept at a distance is the worst thing that can happen to a movie like this, as it allows them to see the various plot holes, and comment on how ridiculous it is.  I've not read the original novel, but I hear it's much better, so it's obvious that something got lost in translation.

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