BadgerNoonan

I'm happy to be of service. The movie looked like a disaster from the start and really sounds like it does a huge disservice to the book, which made me irrationally angry.

The New York Times review of Winter's Tale, the book, from 1983 probably does a better job at synopsis than I will.. http://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/04/books/helprin-tale.html "THERE'S far more that I would wish to say about the book - so much more that 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. The canniness of the balancing of fantasy and realism, the capacity of these Dickensian presences to bring to mind, subtly, contemporaries and near-contemporaries from Rupert Murdoch to Howard Hughes to Thomas Pynchon, the excitement scholars will find in interpreting Mr. Helprin's extension of the line of American imaginers who have grappled for longer than a century with the meanings of technology. . . . Not for some time have I read a work as funny, thoughtful, passionate or large-souled. Rightly used, it could inspire as well as comfort us. ''Winter's Tale'' is a great gift at an hour of great need."

Oh, in the book Peter does not just wander around Manhattan for a hundred years. There's a rip in time off the cost known as the Cloud Wall which occasionally spits out ancient artifacts and occasionally consumes people. It's part of the "everyone just knows and accepts it" magical realism of the book. At the end of the first section Peter and the horse escape Pearly by jumping into the cloud wall. It transports both of them into the present. In the present people have forgotten about the cloud wall over time, so no one can tell exactly how Peter got there, who he is, etc. he doesn't live for 100 years without aging. That decision in the movie sounds insane.

I've read the book and that just makes the movie sound that much worse. Peter getting left in the boat is in the book, it's supposed to be like Moses. Peter in general is supposed to be like Jesus. In fact , the most surprising part of this HDTGM was when everyone acted like it was completely telegraphed that Peter would kill Pearly. Maybe it was in the movie but - spoiler alert - in the book, Pearly kills Peter. Peter has to let himself be killed and in doing so, conquers death (see, Jesus-y). Peter winning really really ruins the whole point. Also, the 300 or so pages that were cut out contained an entire other plot including a character every bit as important as Peter (Hardesty Maratta) and another antagonist named Jackson Meade, without whom nothing makes sense. That plot dovetails with Peter's and the added stakes really are necessary for it not to be silly. If you're wondering why Peter didn't get with Virginia Gamely, it's probably because in the book she's married to Hardesty. Lucifer is not in the book. The antagonists are clearly immortal fallen angel types, but do not look like monsters. Also, the Horse's name is Athansor. I could go on for thousands of words but I'll stop. The book is legitimately great. Oh, and Jason's intuition is correct that Peter is a genius with machines.