[film] A New York Winter's Tale [26-Feb-14]
Monday, March 10th, 2014 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranthWhen I saw the trailer for this, I wondered how anyone could have filmed Mark Helprin's beautiful, vague novel Winter's Tale. The answer is: badly. Or, as Caro put it, 'travesty'.
Colin Farrell is surprisingly good as Peter Lake; the setting (New York and its surrounds, 1916 and 2014) is lovely; the music did not offend me (and Beverly Penn's rendition of Brahms was fab). ... There, that's the positive stuff over with.
Some of the problems [spoilery, but really: read this instead of seeing the film]:
* The plot of the film bears little resemblance to that of the novel.
* all the millenial stuff has been lost, because the 'modern' part of the story has been updated from the late 1990s to 2014. For no obvious reason.
* Hints of magic have been replaced by heavy-handed supernatural elements. (Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe) is a demon: the Judge (Will Smith) is Lucifer. Er, no?)
* but above all, and liable to become a catchphrase: sparkly CGI wings. This was where my benefit of the doubt, suspended alongside my disbelief, came crashing back down. After the wings, I could not take the film seriously.
I am very happy to report that we did not actually pay to see A New York Winter's Tale, due to free vouchers from some offer or other. Still, that's hours of my life I will never get back.
Colin Farrell is surprisingly good as Peter Lake; the setting (New York and its surrounds, 1916 and 2014) is lovely; the music did not offend me (and Beverly Penn's rendition of Brahms was fab). ... There, that's the positive stuff over with.
Some of the problems [spoilery, but really: read this instead of seeing the film]:
* The plot of the film bears little resemblance to that of the novel.
* all the millenial stuff has been lost, because the 'modern' part of the story has been updated from the late 1990s to 2014. For no obvious reason.
* Hints of magic have been replaced by heavy-handed supernatural elements. (Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe) is a demon: the Judge (Will Smith) is Lucifer. Er, no?)
* but above all, and liable to become a catchphrase: sparkly CGI wings. This was where my benefit of the doubt, suspended alongside my disbelief, came crashing back down. After the wings, I could not take the film seriously.
I am very happy to report that we did not actually pay to see A New York Winter's Tale, due to free vouchers from some offer or other. Still, that's hours of my life I will never get back.
