Winter Solstice

I used to be a lover of Beethoven's "Bagatelle No. 25 in A Minor", the well-known piano composition more commonly known as "Für Elise". But after hearing it played, variation-ed, riffed and mangled more than 50 times throughout this turgid drama, I hope to finish my waning years without ever hearing it again. As for the production itself, so-so would be a fitting appraisal. What's good about it are (1) the penultimate appearance and final TV role of the great Jean Simmons; (2) likewise the final performance of the legendary actor Peter Ustinov (they should have given him more screen time); (3) a glimpse of the excellent Irish actress Sinéad Cusack in her mid-career, and (4) a long look at the very handsome German actress Sophie Schütt. Other reviewers more familiar with the writings of Rosamunde Pilcher have done a better job of bashing this dreck than I could have, so I'll leave off with a sincere thank-you for the life works of Jean and Peter, and apologies to Herr Beethoven.

If you are a fan of Rosamunde Pilchers book The Winter Solstice then be warned that this film bares very little resemblance to it. The only things that the book and film have in common are the title and some of the characters. The book is a wonderful story about love in the winter of the main characters lives. The plot revolves around a group of tenuously linked unhappy people. They are cleverly brought together and trapped due to bad weather. Christmas is normally a time of dread for the characters but due to companionship they have the best Christmas ever. This film has changed the whole feeling of the book. The characters have changed their personalities which distorts the story that was the basis of the book. It would have been better if the writer of the film had just written this story and filmed it in its own right. My friends and family are big fans of this book and were looking forward to seeing this film. We were bitterly disappointed and in fact a friend actually wrote to the channel that played this film to complain! I think that Rosamund Pilcher needs a new agent because apparently the same desecration happened to the filming of Coming Home! I am just sorry that such a talented bunch of actors were involved in this film.

Rosamund Pilcher's "Winter Solstice is a long, finely-crafted romantic novel of great subtlety and style. To reduce it to a two hour movie was a challenge utterly beyond this production. The plot is changed wholly uneccesarily and what is left is a film in which the characters are cyphers and the events arbitrary and often cringe-making. The acting is truly appalling though one sympathises with the cast as they were given a script so banal that any semblance of reality must have been impossible to create. The scenery is nice and the canine actor playing Horace the dog barked well. Read the book, avoid the movie.

I shall never understand - why bother titling a movie after a book if you're going to change everything? The movie is just awful even if you'd never read the book - banal, uninteresting, just bad. There are a few reviewers who liked the movie who had never read the book, but to each his own taste. The point is, those readers who are big fans of Rosamunde Pilcher - to whom I would have thought the movie was pitched - value a certain type of story, not cliched, with nuanced characters. They didn't stay true to the CHARACTERS of the story, let alone the plot, other than by using their names. Really, just why bother?

I first saw the film when screened January 2005 I have since bought the DVD. I loved the whole casting in the film but in particular it was Sinead Cusack performance that delighted me. It lent itself to more in depth story and time spent on characters the brush stroke of the different story lines did however lure me to the book by Rosmunde Pilcher. I had not read her work before too romantic I thought but have since read some of her other works. The story of the film while being different from the book adds to it for a 'new' Pilcher fan. Gentle moving story in film more depth in book and great casting where has that Jan Niklas been very pleasant on the eye.