On seeing WINTER'S TALE

Finally saw the film of Mark Helprin's novel WINTER'S TALE tonight. It's a big fat misguided mess, but I didn't hate it. There are nice things in the first half, particularly William Hurt as Issac Penn, the newspaper baron. The fireside chat between him and Colin Farrell is probably the movie's best written scene. And the Penn house on the Lake of the Coheeries is just right; not bad for movie with a tight budget. But...the way screenwriter-director Akiva Goldsman reduces the novel's (insanely) complex metaphysics to hoary movie conventions like devils and demons and an angel-horse with wings is embarrassing. Not surprising, but embarrassing. Novelist Mark Helprin (if he's bothered to see it) must have cried out in anguish when Will Smith appeared as "Lucifer". Good grief. Still, I didn't hate it. Not a success, but I've seen far worse. And I guess I can't hate any movie that brings Eva Marie Saint back to the screen. How sad is that not one review has mentioned what a thrill it is to see her onscreen again. She is the last of the Brando generation after all. She's 89 and beautiful. Older but still beautiful, still herself. Sharp as a tack, clearly. Seeing her reminded me of the Warren Beatty/Annette Bening movie, "Love Affair" (1994). Now that is a truly awful film, a disaster on every level, and yet, there is the Katherine Hepburn sequence, and that extraordinary, lingering final shot of her, which is really Hepburn saying goodbye to movies, and to us. Seeing Eva Marie Saint tonight wasn't as fraught, but I was grateful to the movie and its makers for bringing her back to us, even if the vehicle around her was shaky and unworthy. I'll forget the movie, but remember her face. (Chuck Wilson)