At the center of the film is a love story that spans a century. “It’s about falling in love, and lost love, and it’s insanely romantic,” writer-director Akiva Goldsman relates. “The hero, Peter Lake, is a dashing fellow who lives for more than 100 years because of how much he loves one woman, Beverly Penn. A love that strong is something I think we’d all like to imagine finding for ourselves, and when I go to the movies, I want to be made to feel in ways that are more powerful, more extreme than in real life.”
Colin Farrell, who stars as Peter, says, “If you ask me what makes a good love story, I think it’s people getting lost in each other, and thereby finding themselves for the first time ever, finding the best aspects of themselves in the presence of the other person. That’s what happens for Peter when he meets Beverly. It’s immediate. Their feelings for each other transcend the constrictions of time.”
The character of Peter Lake is something of an anti-hero; when we encounter him in 1916, he is a seasoned and skilled thief, and the way he makes his living is how he first meets Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay). Attempting to burglarize her father’s Central Park mansion and not expecting anyone to be at home, Peter stumbles upon a beautiful vision in white, with fiery red hair and a challenging nature that makes her, much to his surprise, unafraid.
As a youngster on the streets of Brooklyn, Peter Lake is taken in by Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), who trains him to become a thief, and he becomes quite an effective one. But when we meet him in 1916, Peter, now a man, has realized how brutal and how soulless his mentor is, and is eager to leave town and escape Pearly’s extensive reach. However, the best laid plans are often interrupted by circumstance.
“Peter has renounced the idea of being the kind of thief that he was for Pearly—brutal and self-serving,” Goldsman notes. “He is happy to continue to steal. I just think that, in a weird way, he is better suited to be Robin Hood than Al Capone. And though he wants a different future, I’m not sure he ever imagined the one he finds when he comes upon Beverly.”
In playing the role of Peter, Farrell says, “The love that both Beverly and Peter experience together is not anything he expected. He was just there to steal from what he thought was an empty house, not to find a love that draws the attention of the celestial forces of the universe that then conspire to keep him alive for 100 years.”
Their love is so strong that it does indeed, as Farrell puts it, “agitate the shades of light and dark that are manipulating the existence of all human beings on the planet. So it’s pretty heady stuff, and it becomes a matter of life and death.”
Peter has never thought of what purpose he might serve in life, his or anyone else’s. “Peter’s always fought against the way things are,” Farrell allows. “He’s fought against societal systems and against the law, and he’s fought against himself. But as a result of what Beverly awakens in him and the strength of the love experienced between the two of them, he eventually finds that he actually has an extraordinary purpose in life.”
“Colin as Peter was one of those lovely marriages of casting a role,” Goldsman says. “He has such an open heart you can feel him. He’s so present and connected, yet at the same time, mysterious. He’s both beautiful and physical and he really brought those qualities to the character.”
Opening across the Philippines on Feb. 13, 2014, “Winter’s Tale” is distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
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