The film, A Winter’s Tale, written and directed by Akiva Goldsman, falls short. It disproportionately combines themes of fantastic miracles, angels, demons, and flying horses with significant historical issues of immigration and disease.

Though several of these elements may have worked well on their own, the combination of so many various components only serves to confuse viewers.

Adapted from the 1983 bestselling novel by Mark Helprin, the film is set in New York, and moves quickly from the 1890s, to 1916, to present day. It focuses on the life of Peter Lake (Colin Ferrell), a burglar who decides to turn his life around when he meets the rich and beautiful heiress, Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay), who is dying from consumption.

The story is complicated by Peter’s past work with crime boss Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), who aims to prevent Peter from saving Beverly’s life. The plot focuses on the war between good and evil, but as viewers, we are never given the pleasure of fully understanding this war, due to the lack of description and continuity. Instead, we are simply shown a white horse with the ability to fly, and a crime boss who reports directly to Lucifer (Will Smith), and are expected to figure the rest out on our own.

I expected far better from Akiva Goldsman, as an Academy Award winner who previously produced and wrote screenplays for widely successful movies such as A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code. Although Goldsman tried his hand at directing television shows, this was his first attempt at directing a movie.

Goldsman’s vision was to create a sort of fairy tale for adults, telling a love story that defies time by combining drama and fantasy. He chose Mark Helprin’s novel because he loved the idea of the overlap between magic and reality, creating the film adaptation for those “who have had loss and need to believe in magic,” but magic is a far cry from what most viewers felt upon seeing the movie.

The film generates virtually no reliability in the storyline, as at any moment a horse might sprout magical wings, or a man might inexplicably time travel nearly a hundred years without seeming to age a single day. Instead of creating a sense of believable fantasy, the lack of clarity in Goldsman’s film leaves viewers confused and frustrated.

Jessica Brown Findlay plays a slightly generic Beverly Penn, a stark contrast to her dynamic and lovable part of Sybil in Downton Abbey. Beverly faces death in her battle with consumption, grounding her belief that “we are all connected,” and become stars in the sky when we die. Findlay’s acting is not the problem; her character simply would have been a great deal more believable without empty lines such as: “If you don’t love me now, no one ever will.”

The romance between Beverly Penn and Peter Lake begins only moments after they meet, perhaps implying destiny or some other miraculous purpose, but this adds to the lack of believability which lasts throughout the movie.

Colin Ferrell’s Peter Lake wears the same worried, lost-puppy look for the majority of the film as he blindly searches for purpose and destiny in his life, much like the viewers watching his hapless journey.

Ferrell’s previous work includes Total Recall and S.W.A.T., so we can understand why he looks so out of place riding a magical white stallion on his quest to become someone’s miracle. It is only at the end of the movie, after bizarre time travel to 2014, that Peter realizes his life’s purpose, causing his character to come alive.

The special effects used in A Winter’s Tale only add to the general theme of plot confusion. From sparkling beams of light to Lucifer’s anger-induced change of face, the overlap between mystical and physical is altogether too much. Though some of the shots in the film are tastefully done – in spite of the special effects – the quality of the filming itself, enhanced by the soundtrack (composed by Hans Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams), remains diluted by the problematic irregular pace, and the disparate stories attempting to be told within one film.

Though Goldsman’s vision may have been noble in his wish to give our pop-culture nation a little bit of magic, A Winter’s Tale does little more than puzzle its viewers, leaving us with no real sense of resolution.

The extended fairy tale closes with Beverly Penn’s voice, asking: “What if we are all part of a great pattern we will someday understand, what if we get to become stars?”

Though the final message was meant to create a moment of soul-searching, it failed in its attempt to offer the audience something relevant to take away. Perhaps Goldsman should stick to writing screenplays and producing.

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