Directed By John Crowley

Starring – Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Finn Wolfhard

The Plot – 13-year-old New Yorker Theo Decker’s (Elgort) life is turned upside-down when his mother (Kidman) is killed in a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Confused in the rubble of the tragedy, he steals a priceless piece of art known as The Goldfinch.

Rated R for drug use and adult language

POSITIVES

– Gorgeous cinematography. If a film that deals with art so closely wasn’t beautifully rendered, only then would this movie be a complete and total tragedy. Thankfully, the team of Crowley and famed cinematographer Roger Deakins present us with an absorbing pallet that really captures the tonal complexities of the picture. For coloring and texture, there’s a lot of callous whites and greys to match the abstraction of the mystery surrounding these events, giving us tasteful melancholy that constantly reminds us that this is an arthouse film first and foremost. For shot composition, it’s mostly still-frame, and I feel that’s the best vantage point for facial resonation and the small things out of focus that the movie’s themes allude to so candidly. It summarizes the lavish lifestyles of the characters thoroughly, which practically allows this adaptation to immerse us in the details of the novel.

– Rounded cast. The performances are vibrantly complex, starting especially with the combination of Oakes Fegley and Elgort, who round out consistency in psychology for the respective character they embody. For Fegley, it’s interpreting him coming out of his shell the longer that time and people allow him to distance himself from this unshakeable tragedy, and Elgort is really the embodiment of such timing. Not only are these two believable in portraying the same character, but every single dual time-frame character transformation is only rivaled by Stephen King’s “IT: Chapter Two” for most seamless visual transformation. Rounding out the leads is a stoic performance from Kidman, an indulging outcast by Wolfhard, despite an inconsistent Russian accent, and a captivating focus on Jeffrey Wright, whose tapped-into wisdom gives the picture direction and moral fiber during the times when it requires it the most.

– Grief channeled. Perhaps the thing that I respected most about this script was the focus it portrays in depicting grief, and the vulnerability that leads our protagonist through many dark paths that he otherwise would’ve never reached. In embracing the loneliness and disposition of living with a parent who isn’t fully invested in him, Theo’s desperation to attach himself to anyone and anything to release everything inside is something that is admirably honest, especially for youths who sometimes aren’t mature enough to properly emote what is taking place inside. Aside from this, it’s another tip of the hate for Fegley, whose blank stare authenticates a boy who is still very much in shock, granting no shortage of empathy for the character, despite us the audience knowing so very little about the details of the day in question, at least early on in the film. I’m a sucker for a movie that gets emotional resistance right, and doesn’t play it for the temporary cliche that has become a consistency in Hollywood big screen releases. It’s a long and shape-shifting road, and with the right people for guidance, it it allows us to heal by confronting what was there all along.

– Surprising soundtrack. While I have problems with the musical score, which I will get to later, the cues in soundtrack brought audible pleasantries to my ears in the form of familiarity to my album deck that I appreciated probably more than most. Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place” is given about two minutes of run time, to the point that I was desperate for Thom Yorke’s repetition of lyrics, which never come. It’s more used as a compartmentalized score inside of this otherwise awfully obvious one, and really adds to the dimension in dynamic of the scene it accompanies. In addition to this, Van Morrison’s “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” articulately captures the depressive progression of the movie’s third act in a way that an abundance of obvious dialogue never truly captures. Sometimes music is the way to go to allow the audience to reflect on the impacts of a previous scene or sequence, and that’s the case with these two tracks that I wasn’t expecting in a plot and characters with champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

– Go in blinded. I have heard from readers of the novel that this isn’t the best adaptation in terms of faithfulness to a product that some have deemed as “Incapable of being adapted”, and I can accurately interpret that from my own ignorant and inexperienced position. For someone like me who hasn’t read the novel, I enjoyed the many twists and turns that played as a placebo for the ambitious run time, that we start to feel by the third act. There’s enough intrigue and misdirection in the heart of these subplots to not only grant a layer of much-appreciated empathy for Theo as a protagonist, but also to further flesh out some of those scattered pieces that didn’t seem to materialize until they are given the light of realization. This is a story that certainly didn’t end the way that I wanted it to, nor that I expected to, and that’s more of a homage to the spontaneity of our short time here, and how nothing goes the intended route of conventionalism to our satisfaction.

NEGATIVES

– Violent tonal shifts. If I had to summarize this movie’s biggest problem in a single area, it’s that it often tries to be too many different genres in the same picture, and none of them transition believable enough to feel like they’re helmed under the same director. This is definitely Crowley’s biggest problem with adapting the source material, because too often too many of his tones are abruptly rendered, and it ends up changing the entire dynamic of the attitude surrounding the central plot. In the third act alone, there are three different kinds of subgenres introduced and not followed through on, making the important and pivotal climax feel as scatter-brained as anything that I’ve seen in 2019.

– Disjointed storytelling. Another mess that the movie endures is this spontaneous jump in multiple timelines, that is every bit unnecessary as it is compromising to the pacing of the sequences. What’s most important during a steep timeline jump is to introduce all of the elements that have transpired, and while the script does do this, it does it in a way that makes us the audience feel like we were already privy to this information, and it’s not exactly a big deal. One such element deals with a romantic subplot for Theo, which is frightening in itself considering what these two characters are to each other, but made even more sudden because of how little the story decides to develop between them. This kind of story shift is littered throughout the film, and cements the idea to me that this film would be better served on Netflix as a ten episode streaming series.

– Meandering music. I won’t mention names, but the composer of this film has been known for some less than thrilling audible emphasis’ in movies, and his streak continues for “The Goldfinch”. To say that this movie manipulates audiences into feeling a certain way that it doesn’t truly earn with its storytelling is the understatement of the year. He takes these sharp and obvious deposits of music, and makes them inescapable, made even more apparent by a choice in volume that drowns out the performances and dramatic capabilities of this talented ensemble cast. This is one of my least favorite musical scores of 2019, and stands as a directional booklet on what not to do when incorporating music into your film.

– Distracted. Considering this film was advertised with the bombing being the central focus of the film, there’s so little attention paid to it, which becomes more obvious the longer the film runs. I was pulled into this movie with the lure of a mystery that centered around what happened on that one important day, and the longer the film goes, it has moved on from it in a way that essentially makes it feel inconsequential. That seems almost disgusting to say considering this is a little boy losing his mother in an act of terrorism, but there’s so little details given with the who and the why that it almost feels like it could’ve happened on accident with the building itself malfunctioning. What’s even more confusing is that Theo blames himself for it throughout, which I get is one of the stages of grief, but there’s nothing revealed that should make him even remotely think that he was a factor in this bombing, so I don’t get it.

– Incapable of satisfaction. This is dealing with the ending primarily, because there are so many dynamics introduced and never followed through that leaves us with an unavoidable inevitability of disappointment that we know is coming. It writes itself into a corner with a long-winded run time, as well as closing moments that are completely anti-climatic, and doesn’t pay-off in the way that entertaining movies rightfully should. For the most part, it’s being asked to come along on this journey with many different arcs and characters, with the promise of something great at the end, but then when it eventually comes, it’s nothing more than a thank you for braving it out. If the closing moments were predictable, it would even be fine, but this film finishes on such a loss of momentum from a previous act that transforms everything in the movie to something completely different tonally and creatively, and it sends us home with the weakest scene of the movie during the time when it needed strength the most.

My Grade: 5/10 or D