Before we go any further, you should know that this is not a whiny, “the book was, like, way better than the movie” type of review. I don’t believe it is a prerequisite that all moviegoers attending a film based on a cherished novel must read that novel first. In fact, I didn’t read the book, The Goldfinch, and am therefore unable to make that comparison, fair or not. So, now that that’s out of the way: This review? It is simply a “I was quite bored with how this story was told on screen—but I do like antique furniture and Ansel Elgort, so I kept my eyes open” sort of review.
The film’s director, John Crowley, had a vision. I’ve seen evidence of them before, and they are beautiful (e.g. multiple Oscar®-nominee Brooklyn [2015]). The dreamy aesthetics and character connection in that film were enough to catapult me right into the theater chair for this, his latest film, The Goldfinch.
Like Brooklyn, The Goldfinch is a very human film made for empathetic people. But it is missing that effervescent connection between the souls on screen. So, in my heart of hearts, I appreciate the beauty which Crowley had conjured up for this film, but I don’t believe it came alive enough for us to grasp and hang on to breathlessly, for as long and as drawn-out as this film is.
In a nutshell, Theo’s mom is dead. She died in a terrorist bombing at an art gallery, and Theo was there. He feels at fault; he is a young boy, struggling with too much loss for anyone his age to bare. A painting also went missing from the gallery that day, and again, shame consumes Theo. Quasi-orphaned, Theo is taken in by a wealthy high-society family, which he grows somewhat close to—but even that feels contrived, as Nicole Kidman’s Mrs. Parker feels difficult to get close to for both Theo and the audience alike. Theo belongs nowhere and to no one. His deadbeat dad Larry—played by an offbeat Luke Wilson—is a nightmare. His “family” dynamic is melancholy and darkly sour, and it sticks in your teeth like dusty molasses.
So we’re on this drifting, pining, endless-seeming journey with Theo as he meanders through adolescence and into adulthood. Save for the kind refuge of a quiet antiques dealer and furniture restorer named Hobie, played by the ever-lovely Jeffrey Wright, the people in Theo’s life do not give him life. He is easily influenced, with dreams for the future, but no gusto to act upon them. And while we stumble upon breadcrumbs as the two-and-a-half-hour movie wears on, discovering more of his story that we were initially shielded from early on, it’s just not enough. At the very least, we needed the backbone essentials up front to truly give more than a damn.
I constantly found myself in flux: somewhere between ogling the rich mahogany settees and crisp linen drapes in each scene within the uber-privileged Barbour house and the Hobart & Blackwell antiques store, and feeling sorry for (as opposed to interested in) the orphaned main character. Despite the lengthy running time, the audience is not really given the chance to be swept away by the action—or inaction, more accurately—of young Theo Decker (Oakes Fegley) and adult Theo Decker (Ansel Elgort).
Ansel Egort in “The Goldfinch.”
On its surface, I imagine the tagline for the movie—“The story of a stolen life”—is meant to invoke pity for Theo’s own life. But the other stolen life is that of the very object of the film’s title—a masterpiece, not a human—that the story is based upon. The object: an irreplaceable, near-mythical painting of a bird, aptly titled “The Goldfinch.”
The thing about this movie is that I desperately wanted to like it. I love the premise and themes of the film (art! thievery! coming of age!). And who’s not a sucker for a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel come to life? But I was most enamored by the idea of this cast bringing the drama to the big screen. And I felt let down. Not by the actors—they did a beautiful job, for the most part. I particularly found both young and adult Theo (Fegley and Elgort, respectively) quite mesmerizing.
All in all, The Goldfinch was just too melancholy in a very meandering fashion. I can take melancholy and I can take meandering. I can even take sadness and staleness and unrelenting bleakness swathed in cream. But I can’t take all of that, together, without any sort of spark to pull everything together.
Mandi Ruffner