Magic romance covers the bases
KATHERINE MONK Finally, a realistic romance: A thief falls for a dying heiress who believes in miracles and shows him the meaning of love after they fly off on his magic white horse.
It’s so freaky. The exact same thing happened to my friend last week.
She met the guy on match. com after the guy who found her glass slipper didn’t pan out.
These things happen. We all want the perfect romance, and Winter’s Tale does everything in its sepia-toned power to be your everything.
From Colin Farrell’s flowing hair, which appears in several dashing styles that all beg finger stroking, to Jessica Brown Findlay’s perfect lips and gauzy nightgowns, Akiva Goldsman throws a whole lot of beauty on the big screen in his adaptation of Mark Helprin’s novel.
He also tries to go for something deeply touching by serving up a story of undying love and the power it can bring into the world if only we gave it a chance instead of serving the demons of Hell.
Oh yes. Did I mention Lucifer? He’s played by Will Smith.
Oops. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that. God forbid I spoil the plot.
Suffice to say that there are forces of good in this movie and there are forces of evil.
The good guy is the one on the white horse (Colin Farrell).
The bad guy is the one with a gigantic scar across his face, Pearly Soames, played with a side order of ham poutine by Russell Crowe.
Soames used to take care of Peter Lake (Farrell) when he was just a poor orphan on the streets of turn-of-thecentury New York, but when Peter decided to be nice, he ended up on his own and running from his old employer, who now wants him dead.
Just when Peter is cornered, along comes a magic white horse to save him.
But the horse doesn’t do everything he wants, and when the horse refuses to leave the front of a young woman’s mansion, Peter obliges the magical beast and breaks in.
There, he meets Beverly Penn (Findlay), the consumptive heiress to Isaac Penn’s (William Hurt) newspaper fortune.
The thief’s heart is stolen, and suddenly, he’s desperate to save her from imminent death.
He also believes there’s a small chance he may be able to pull it off, once the wise First Nations character (Graham Greene) explains the meaning of the white horse.
Every person has a miracle within, but we don’t know it, so we don’t use our power and get our wings and become one with the stars.
But this movie doesn’t find real magic because it’s not authentically human. The characters don’t operate in any world that looks familiar. And they don’t feel real because their actions are frequently insane.
We can forgive the demon for being over-the-top, but Farrell and Findlay really have to sell their connection, and while both do their best, this is where Goldsman fails. His script doesn’t give the actors a chance to do anything other than gaze into each other’s eyes, or weep.
This Winter’s Tale needed friction. And while we do get a flying white horse, there’s no magic.