Winter’s Tale

This is a difficult review to write, perhaps impossible, because the very act of saying anything about this movie runs the risk of decreasing your odds of enjoying it as it was meant to be enjoyed.

Even praising it as it merits being praised will ruin it for some; because many a man is disappointed by expectations raised too high. I had no such curse, because I walked into the theater with no notion whatsoever what kind of film it was, or how good or bad, my heart was like snow on which no footprint has fallen, and everything happened just as it was meant to be.

It is as if every movie has a miracle meant for one, only one, who sits in the audience to watch and be carried away. This may be that movie for you. It may be your golden story. It was mine.

It is called WINTER’S TALE.

For everyone there is one story, one precious story, that lives in the heart forever like a golden lamp, the living source of warmth when the imagination is filled with shapes of frost, but also the light in whose gleam all other stories are judged. The golden story is usually encountered in first youth, and never at my age, unless heaven opens a particular gift for you, just for you.

Such movies are rare as gems, as strange and wondrous as white magic, as heartrending as new love.

So, if you are willing to take me on faith, completely on faith, without reading another word, and go out this evening with your best gal and see this film, you will enjoy it more than if you read the rest of this article, where I discuss the film, and try to persuade you to go. It is that rich and that deep and that poignant, and I assure you that if I even tell you what genre this movie is, it will ruin part of the surprise, perhaps a crucial part.

Trust me: I speak in sober judgment. Go now, quickly, to the theater, without even returning first to your house for your coat. You will thank me. I would wager the price of a ticket, and offer to repay any man who takes me at my word and finds himself disappointed, and so remove the element of risk from your decision, but, alas, I am a poor man, and no gambler. But I will risk my word, which is more precious to me.

For those of you who are unconvinced, read on! But the diminution of your pleasure should I persuade you to go is now no longer on my conscience.

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.