WORDS Alexandra Greenfield
A New York Winter’s Tale is looking for a miracle. Unfortunately, it never finds one. The film begins by drifting between New York in the present day and the city at the turn of the 20th century with an uncertainty and aimlessness that is to persist for much of its 2 hour runtime. The plot revolves around the life of Peter Lake (Colin Farrell), a petty thief and supposedly charming rogue, following his escapades through a nearly too picturesque snow covered New York. After breaking into her house, Peter instantaneously falls in love with an enigmatic, piano-playing red-headed girl by the name of Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay). Within minutes Miss Penn reveals to the enamoured Peter that she has only weeks to live, despite displaying a vitality that would put any healthy body to shame. Determined to save her through the power of love, Peter follows Beverly to her country house, woos her sufficiently and then watches as she dies in his arms. Having taken well over an hour to reach this point, the film then jumps forward a century to the present day and hurriedly recounts a second narrative in which Peter tries once more to save the life of a young girl with similarly fiery locks. All the while, he is being pursued by the villainous Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe) for crimes which are not fully made clear in a cosmic subplot that never reaches its potential. And there’s a flying horse.
While the scenery certainly serves to delight at points, it does not provide sufficient entertainment to keep alive a narrative which flounders under the weight of its own indecision. In one of the far too frequent lines that sound more like soundbites than dialogue, Soames declares that ideas “can do more good than harm”. It is a shame, then, that this film seems to have no idea at all of what it is trying to achieve. First time director Akiva Goldsman focuses on the love story between Peter and Beverly at the expense of the other interweaving plots which are necessary to give the movie any sense of direction or purpose. Worse still is the total lack of connection between the leading actors which makes the plot slide by in an excruciating compilation of cliches and concessions to melodramatic romance; for all the attention that Goldsman gives to light in this film, it is almost possible to see the cameras off screen, lazily watching the actors cringe their way through each scene. The chemistry is misdirected; these are roles that have been practiced one too many times in the mirror and so vanity takes centre stage. Crowe assumes his role with characteristic gruffness, but the inertia of the narrative prevents his character ever really becoming anything more than the token bad guy. The audience can never envisage him actually following through on any of his threats, even at the moment when he has Beverley by the throat. Or perhaps it is the fact that Peter comes out of multiple fights and beatings with little more than a scratch on his cheek that ensures any tension built up at the start of the movie disappears as rapidly as Beverly’s clothes do in the compensatory bathing scene.
The greatest tragedy of this film is that it could be much better. Goldsman fails to exploit the talents of a strong cast, making them play second fiddle to a cinematography that also falls short of its potential. The story, if better executed, offers ample opportunity to cash in on the lucrative supernatural/fairy-story market which currently pervades cinema and TV, and yet the movie does not seem able to believe in its own fiction. As such, it comes across as apologetic, trying too hard to cling onto reality instead of embracing its fantasy. In order to take any pleasure from this story, the audience will not need to suspend their disbelief as much as they will need to dispense with it altogether.
