Winter’s Tale is a bewildering mess that’s mildly acceptable

Adaptation is difficult, that should have no argument. The most common adaptation tends to be book to movie, which ties into my underlying thesis, which is this: Just because you have a supremely willful desire and heartfelt drive to turn your favorite story into visual magic does not mean you will do it justice. Sometimes that love for the material is what causes the final product to suffer. Look at Watchmen, where Zack Snyder certainly saved the movie from being a complete abomination (by intervening with the studios), and yet fell prey to all manner of problems in tone, character, visual aesthetic, and structure. I still say Darren Aronofsky would’ve done it justice, but then again, I say that about all movies (I may be a bit of a fan of that guy).

When we’re kids, it’s easy to be caught in the magic and imagination of stories, and that becomes something different as adults, nostalgic love for the past and a deep seated desperation to feel that way again. Perhaps you might be able to do so by showing off your new movie. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us will be able to see through the haze of adaptation failure.

Winter’s Tale is from writer-director Akiva Goldsman (of A Beautiful Mind) based on the book of the same name, a massive 700 page story about a sort of alternate New York where angels and demons battle over the souls of us lowly humans. And miracles exist, naturally. This begins the first problem of the movie: confusion. Those familiar with the story will no doubt pick up on the many little things that us non-readers missed, but the movie immediately starts with jumping between multiple time periods, setting up mysteries that only slightly have payoffs.

And the payoffs are often more like “because I said so” instead of “oh, that makes sense” that elucidate and enlighten the audience. Colin Farrell plays Peter Lake, a thief in late 19th century New York City that’s chafing under the rule of crime boss (and also demon) Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe) so he tries to leave, I guess. But the interference of a magical flying horse (and sort of guardian angel, maybe literally?) causes Peter to stumble across young Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), the eldest daughter in a very rich family but slowly dying of consumption. Cue a scene or two of the two chattering away to tell the audience that this truly is a magical, fated, tragic romance, although it seems like all the actual character building is offscreen, as we keep jumping to later on when they are closer and closer still. Part of the problem (another one) is that this so-called romance doesn’t seem to make sense, and despite the effort of the two actors, the dialogue fails to keep us invested as Peter tries to keep his beloved from dying.

Which brings us to problem number three: the script. From beginning to end, this movie looks lovely, showing off the winter setting of NYC, although some of the more obvious CGI elicits more giggles than gasps. That said, the dialogue is simplistic at best and silly at worst. Boatloads of odd concepts about angels and demons, with an actual appearance of Lucifer (in a bit of stunt casting that might’ve worked if the dialogue and visual effects weren’t hammy), and a touch of immortality. Magical realism is nothing new to movies, of course, and often the rules are ill-defined and simplistic, but the problem here is the rules aren’t simple. Nobody really seems to know how anything works. I read a little more about the book after seeing the movie, and apparently there is a lot of backstory that isn’t touched on at all in this film. It makes me feel like it suffers from the most common adaptation malady there is: “Hey, remember this!” Meaning, of course, that the movie is a series of reminders about great things you remembered from the book. Watchmen suffers from this as I mentioned, as do most of the Harry Potter movies. You can tell that everyone’s trying here, but that just makes it sadder when it fails.

There’s also a weird thematic disconnect between the stories, I suspect because so many of the scenes are rushed, yet because there’s so much material, the movie seems overlong at two hours long. Some bits are fun enough, and some of the romance scenes are nicely done, although there are more than a few parts where I was very close to falling asleep. So the movie is partially about miracles and religious “magic,” with sets of rules and laws that aren’t clearly defined yet are constantly discussed. There’s also the weird time jumps and implications of how miracles work, with the mild romance setting up things in the past, and extremely thinly defined “mother in the future” played by Jennifer Connelly, utterly wasted here.

My final point is this: If you want to see Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly in a movie that’s legitimately good, I’d hold out hopes for the upcoming Noah, a different sort of religiously magical film from Darren Aronofsky. Which seems a roundabout way of saying “this movie was targeted to come out Valentine’s Day weekend because of the romantic element but really isn’t worth your time.” I just hope that Akiva Goldsman is happy with it, because I know I’m not.