The Goldfinch
Directed by: John Crowley
Written by: Peter Straughan - Based on the book by Donna Tartt
Starring: Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Finn Wolfhard, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Aneurin Barnard, Luke Wilson, Sarah Paulson, Ashleigh Cummings, Denis O’Hare, Willa Fitzgerald, Aimee Laurence, Luke Kleintank, Hailey Wist, Boyd Gaines, Robert Joy
Drama - 149 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 11 Sep 2019
Written by: Peter Straughan - Based on the book by Donna Tartt
Starring: Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Finn Wolfhard, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Aneurin Barnard, Luke Wilson, Sarah Paulson, Ashleigh Cummings, Denis O’Hare, Willa Fitzgerald, Aimee Laurence, Luke Kleintank, Hailey Wist, Boyd Gaines, Robert Joy
Drama - 149 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 11 Sep 2019
Director John Crowley created low-level to moderate indie fare across the pond in the British Isles before he struck gold with 2015’s Brooklyn. His star, Saoirse Ronan, emigrated from Ireland, navigated a complex New York City, and made many an audience member swoon while the film collected a warehouse load of award nominations and accolades. Back with another adapted screenplay in hand, albeit from a far more popular novel and Pulitzer Prize winner, Crowley attempts a gargantuan feat - make a good movie from one of the most beloved novels of the past five years. Many have tried and perished before him. But, Crowley went out and scored one of Hollywood’s best cinematographers and signed on the likes of Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Sarah Paulson, and a stable of young up-and-comers. Even these moves cannot save The Goldfinch. It is stale, off-putting, awkward at the best of times, and a thorough chore to sit through at a punishing two-and-a-half hours.
Adapting the tome is a veteran screenwriter, Peter Straughan, who took on the likes of John LaCarré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Hillary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall. Wolf Hall was a six episode Mini-Series, a format which The Goldfinch may prefer. While the package as a whole is high-gloss and morose, coming off like the museum pieces it features, it is also as lively as a renaissance art museum. Dramatic film aficionados appreciate the feelings that serious-minded, glacially-paced films can evoke in them; however, nothing about The Goldfinch offers the subtlety a finely tuned drama piece requires. It is choppy and jolting. Characters stare at each other for far too long as if a dozen pages of inner monologue scroll by behind their eyeballs. Nicole Kidman’s (Aquaman) glare is especially discomforting. She laser beams young Theodore Decker (Oakes Fegley, Pete's Dragon) with a stare that could crack a statue in two.
Adapting the tome is a veteran screenwriter, Peter Straughan, who took on the likes of John LaCarré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Hillary Mantel’s Man Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall. Wolf Hall was a six episode Mini-Series, a format which The Goldfinch may prefer. While the package as a whole is high-gloss and morose, coming off like the museum pieces it features, it is also as lively as a renaissance art museum. Dramatic film aficionados appreciate the feelings that serious-minded, glacially-paced films can evoke in them; however, nothing about The Goldfinch offers the subtlety a finely tuned drama piece requires. It is choppy and jolting. Characters stare at each other for far too long as if a dozen pages of inner monologue scroll by behind their eyeballs. Nicole Kidman’s (Aquaman) glare is especially discomforting. She laser beams young Theodore Decker (Oakes Fegley, Pete's Dragon) with a stare that could crack a statue in two.
The stoicism is unbearable. Nobody shows an emotional hint on their faces even though a terrorist bombing just occurred in Manhattan, Theo’s mom is dead, dad is absent, and nobody knows what to do with him. It’s all thousand yard stares, solitude, and hushed whispers. Connecting with Theo is also a challenge. This middle schooler can competently talk Beethoven and Edgar Allen Poe and he dresses sharper than your boss. The hollowness of it all gets even hollower when Theo’s dad (Luke Wilson, Measure of a Man) and gum-smacking paramour, Xandra “with an X” (Paulson, Glass), drop in to whisk Theo away from Park Avenue to recession-blighted Las Vegas. The jump is jarring for more than Theo. Director of Photography Roger Deakins exchanges New York’s washed-out gray for sun-drenched yellow.
Vegas’s emptiness, his father’s obvious nefarious intentions, and Theo’s new best friend, the vodka-swilling, pill-popping, very Russian, Boris (Finn Wolfhard, It Chapter Two), shatter any reverie and groove the audience may have found to watch Theo’s post-bomb blast life. It was a bold choice to cast such a well known child actor like Wolfhard, whom the globe recognizes from Stranger Things. Boris comes off as Finn Wolfhard playing a Russian. His accent may pass muster, but the audience will never bite on the authenticity - it removes us from unconsciously absorbing character and atmosphere since we fixate on Wolfhard speaking like Chekov from Star Trek. You will crave New York’s rain-soaked neon as the Vegas scenes continue to pile on the melodrama and boredom.
Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver) plays Theo in his early-20s, but Elgort is not the film’s lead actor. Someone will most likely take on the stopwatch math, but it feels like Fegley and the youngsters get far more screen time than the 10 years later gang. Everyone stares at each other as much as they used to, but Nicole Kidman smiles now, Elgort maintains a calm facade even though his life, both professionally and personally, crumbles around him, and none of it is helped by spending too much time snorting pharmaceuticals and cradling a particular important object in an out of the way storage locker.
The film comes off uneven. Perhaps it’s the unpredictable flash back / flash forward mechanism Crowley employs or the ridiculous, scrambled egg ending which feels slapdash sewn onto the narrative because they finally had to wrap it up somehow. The soundtrack spices up the Vegas doldrums with punchy tracks from New Order and Radiohead while Cigarettes After Sex’s “Apocalypse” serenades a key scene late in the second half. No killer soundtrack on Earth, though, can save the alienation emanating from the script, editing, and jittery plot. It’s a shame. There are a legion of the novel’s fans with fingers crossed hoping the film is as successful an adaptation as Tate Taylor’s take on The Help was back in 2011. It is not. The tone is off, the execution is uncomfortable, and The Goldfinch will join that list of films which tried to adapt culture-conquering literature, but tripped over its good intentions.
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