My fundamental question after seeing “Winter’s Tale”: by which method did Hollywood acquire author Mark Helprin’s permission to totally eviscerate his most famous work: torture or bribery?
Benjamin DeMott’s New York Times book review on the back of the book “Winter’s Tale” reads “Is it not astonishing that a work so rooted in fantasy, filled with narrative high-jinks and comic flights, stands forth centrally as a moral discourse?” He continues, “I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance.” Worry not, Mr. DeMott, because noted screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, in his directorial debut, has just failed the work enough for two. Or rather, for everyone.
The trailer revealed the first of several bad signs. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t see why writers of film adaptations replace perfectly good dialogue with their own mush. Even the most seemingly unimportant details of a novel may have been carefully crafted by its author to later bloom into profound relevance. Therefore, deviating however slightly from his or her exact choice of words is like failing to carry a digit while attempting to solve a very long and complex mathematical equation.
That said, “Winter’s Tale” seemed quite accurate –– at least up until the part where the heroic thief Peter Lake (played by Colin Farrell) meets the dying Beverly Penn (played by Jessica Brown Findlay). I was ready to give the film the benefit of the doubt. In fact, it got some of the most seemingly-random parts of the book right down to the smallest details, including Peter Lake’s discovery of his companion, a white horse named Athansor, early on. The define-the-relationship conversation between Peter Lake and Beverly’s father Isaac Penn (played by William Hurt), which is quite comically conducted like a job interview, draws from the book almost word-for-word.
On the whole, however, “Winter’s Tale” is a white-hot mess.
Of course, Hollywood has the upper hand even in its adaptations, as some moments of this film could be anticipated by neither a reader of the book nor his confused date. Take, for example, the jump-scare of Pearly Soames (played by an adequately monstrous Russell Crowe, but with a woefully bad Irish accent) abruptly killing a waiter and revealing he is a demon at the same time. I almost completely checked out. Despite plenty of religious symbolism in the book, there are no demons. Add Soames’ pandering to a bureaucratic Lucifer, played by Will Smith anachronistically dressed in a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt and reading “A Brief History of Time.” This confusing scene is — you guessed it — not in the book, and for good reason. I understand that I was watching fiction, but inserting Lucifer into Helprin’s story is like, say, inserting space aliens into “Indiana Jones.” Oh, wait.
The depiction of Virginia Gamely (played by Jennifer Connelly) and her sick daughter Abby is as no better. Despite factoring majorly into the film’s finale (and much more so in the book), we are not given nearly enough time to care about them. Maybe these characters should have wasted one or two lines fewer on talk of chicken and ice cream.
As for Athansor, he is indeed a flying horse. The film chooses to convey this by routinely depicting him with wings. Sparkly, glittery, very poorly-animated wings. His flying scenes look like they belong on VHS, and culminate in some spectacularly bad “deus ex machina” near the end. The less said of that, the better.
Speaking of finales, the novel regales of a burning city, soul-crushing chaos, an engineering wonder, heart-melting redemption, and an earth-shaking mass rebirth. And the film? A horribly lame, low-stakes fistfight on the ice between Peter and Pearly (complete with cartoonish punching sounds), and a contrived, princess-reviving bed. Not a satisfying substitute.
What other characters and story elements didn’t make the cut? Why, Sarah Gamely and her life-giving hospitality, Asbury Gunwillow and his fateful boat, Christiana Friebourg and her talking fireplace, Hardesty Maratta and his dead father’s salver, Harry Penn and his powerful press, Praeger de Pinto and his golden age, Jackson Mead and his rainbow bridge, and much more. To be shown this hollow snooze-fest as a sample of its source material is like being sat before a grand feast and only allowed to chew on an appetizer — or your napkin. What hurts the most is realizing that the last time Crowe, Connelly, and Goldsman all worked together was in 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind” — winner of Best Picture that year. What has happened in 13 years? Does practice make radically imperfect?
I would happily separate “Winter’s Tale” from its source material in my judgment, but Hollywood very much informs the public imagination, no matter what it creates or adapts. Where is it taking ours? Helprin’s classic, long considered un-filmable since its 1983 publishing, would have stood a much better chance as a miniseries, if anything at all. Skip the movie. Try the book.
