The Goldfinch (2019)
Directed by John
Crowley
Warner Brothers, 149
minutes, R (drug use, language)
★★★
Movies often borrow from books, but literature is a
problematic source. Even a short novel has more room to develop plots, back
stories, and detail. A 300-page novel will take an average reader more than
eight hours to finish; most script writers and film directors get 90 minutes to
two hours to bring the same story to the screen. So what does one do with Donna
Taart’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning The
Goldfinch, which checks in at nearly 800 pages? It doesn’t help that the
book was polarizing; there were those—including me—who thought it riveting and
others who and bailed before finishing.
If you see the phrase “Inspired by” at the beginning of a
film, it usually means that liberties have been taken and that the book provides
a seed from which the film blossomed; if it says “Adapted from,” most directors
seek to be as faithful as they can to the printed word and excise as little as
possible. Director John Crowley and script writer Peter Straughan opted for an adaptation
of The Goldfinch. In retrospect, a
reimagining might have been wiser. The
Goldfinch was a major box office bomb last year. It’s not the turkey some
critics considered it to be, but it is uneven. It’s worth a watch if: (a) you
have actually read (and liked) the novel and (b) if you don’t expect a
masterpiece.
The story unfolds when 13-year-old Theo Decker (Oakes
Fegley) has dawdled and his flaky-but-chilly mother, Audrey, must walk him to
his private school. They detour to the Metropolitan Museum of Art so that she
can show Theo a painting. Theo is more interested in a girl he spies and
decides to hang out near the gift shop while Audrey goes off to view another
painting. Suddenly a terrorist bomb explodes and scores are killed, including
Audrey and a man named Welty, who expires just as he places his partner’s
business card into Theo’s palm. Amidst the rubble, dust, cacophony, and mayhem,
Theo impulsively absconds with the picture Audrey wanted him to see: The Goldfinch, a 1654 painting from
Carel Fabritus (1622-54), a Rembrandt student who was killed when a gunpowder
magazine blew up in the Dutch city of Delft. (Taart did not invent Fabritus,
the painting, or the explosion in Delft.)
This is merely the start of Theo’s journey. He is
temporarily placed with the Barbour family: Chance, his moody socialite wife
Samantha (Nicole Kidman), and their three children: Kitsey, Platt, and the
geeky Andy, to whom Theo is kind though Andy is really annoying. Just when it
looks as if Theo is about to be orphaned, his father Larry (Luke Wilson)
appears to take him to Phoenix. Larry is every bit the small con man/big-time
loser Theo’s mom said he was, and neither he nor his waitress girlfriend Xandra
(Sarah Paulson) has an ounce of couth or a clue on how to raise a kid. Theo is
cast adrift in a desert wasteland—a housing development that went bankrupt before
completion. He is out of place in a public school and friendless, until he
meets Boris (Finn Wolfhard), who might be either Russian, Ukrainian, or
Hungarian—his tale changes. The two do what you might expect feral children to
do: smoke, drink, do drugs, and commit petty larceny. Larry is a compulsive
gambler so desperate for money that he tries to bilk Theo out of his trust fund
and it’s implied that Boris’ father is a mobster. Theo and Boris plan to
runaway to New York, but Boris gets cold feet and Theo sets off on his own.
Here is where Crowley makes a big decision and perhaps not a
wise one. He has already pared to the bone Theo’s relationship with Welty’s
business sidekick Hobie (Jeffrey Wright) and Pippa, the girl from the museum over
whom Hobie has guardianship and Theo’s unattainable flame. Likewise, Theo’s friendship
with Andy is glossed. Instead of continuing to telescope, Crowley chops. We
next meet Theo as a young adult helping Hobie with his antiques and restoration
shop in the Village. Somehow—the novel explains it—Theo has been to college
and looks and acts the part of a young entrepreneur. He still pines for Pippa,
but is engaged to Kitsey Barbour and adored by her entire family. There’s
nothing like a Boris sighting to stir the pot. What about the painting, you
wonder? Yeah, there’s that and much more to resolve. By then, The Goldfinch is already working
overtime.
It doesn’t help that the young actors portraying Theo and
Boris are way more compelling than the adults who assume those roles (Ansel
Elgort and Aneurin Barnard). There is also a jarring tonal shift: from
character development to caper film. What the movie does best is raise
questions about how much ugliness a life can endure before it corrupts the soul,
but is a truncated adaptation needed to accomplish this? One of the better reviews of The Goldfinch summed up the film nicely.
If you’ve read the book, the movie will be eye candy; if you’ve not, you’ll
probably be lost. Its best gift is to remind you why Donna Taart won the
Pulitzer.
Rob Weir
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