“To lose something that should have been immortal. Please tell me it isn’t true.” That line may be referring to the titular “The Goldfinch” painting by Carel Fabritius, one could also repurpose it as a statement on the film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Goldfinch,” by Donna Tartt.
Because, despite having an A-list cast, an Oscar nominated director, an Oscar winning production team, and a fairly substantial amount of hype prior to release, “The Goldfinch” flops hard and in incredibly interesting ways.
Ansel Elgort (“Baby Driver,” “The Fault in Our Stars”) and Oakes Fegley (“Pete’s Dragon (2016),” “Wonderstruck”) both play the protagonist, Theo. Elgort tackles the role in Theo’s older years, and he’s the best of the two. There isn’t anything amazing about his performance, but Elgort’s base level of charm that was shown off so excellently in Baby Driver helps him soldier through most of the incredibly poor script.
Fegley isn’t as successful and ends up spending most of the film either rambling with bizarrely high vocabulary levels given his age or staring into nothingness, looking cute and helpless. Meanwhile, his other child actor counterpart Finn Wolfhard (“IT (2017),” “Stranger Things”), is completely trying too hard. As Boris, Theo’s childhood Russian friend, he’s earnest and clearly trying to give a good performance, but the overblown and ridiculous nature of his character just doesn’t allow it.
The rest of the adults are just…bizarre. Luke Wilson (“The Royal Tenenbaums,” “Idiocracy”) plays Theo’s dad and his trying eyes aren’t a result of the father’s characterization, but clearly an actor trying with an extremely poor script. His wife/girlfriend, Xandra, shows Sarah Paulson (“Ocean’s 8,” “Glass”) desperately trying not to fall apart on set, and Aneurin Barnard (“Interlude in Prague,” “Dunkirk”), as adult Boris, at least fairs better than Wolfhard, mainly by toning down his eagerness and actually having a real Russian accent, instead of Wolfhard’s “I’ve seen Red Dawn” impression.
No one’s performance is a stupendously bizarre as Nicole Kidman (“Destroyer,” “Rabbit Hole”). As the mother of Theo’s best friend, who’s family takes him in after the horrific tragedy that kickstarts the story, there’s an expectation of motherly love and warmth. However, at every turn, Kidman seems to be trying to audition for a Friday the 13th remake.
Her steely gaze and hushed whisper don’t give off any kind of motherly intent. Instead, it just comes across as is she’s giving bedroom eyes to Theo at all time; as a child and adult. While it initially seems extremely creepy, it eventually tumbles into the realm of comedy, making Kidman’s performance and every scene she’s in laughable when they clearly should be taken seriously.
Before touching on what makes this film baffling, it is worth noting that there are still elements of good within it. John Crowley (“Brooklyn,” “Closed Circuit”) directs the scenes excellently. It’s weird to say that, given how poor the film’s overall quality is, but Crowley and Academy Award winning Cinematographer Roger Deakins (“Blade Runner 2049,” “No Country For Old Men”) both shoot “The Goldfinch” in gorgeous shades of creamy white colors and utilize things like silence and sepia tones extremely effectively. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, a gorgeous looking and gorgeously shot film. The musical score by Trevor Gureckis (“Rattle the Cage,” “Bloodline”) contains some wonderful string pieces, and during the moments of silence and wonderful cinematography, it shows just how phenomenal the production crew of this film is.
Jeffrey Wright (“The Manchurian Candidate,” “Casino Royale (2006)”), as Theo’s pseudo caretaker and mentor, is also the only actor who seems to come out of this unscathed. He’s warm and understanding, a bright spot and a real person in a movie otherwise filled with cardboard Bloomingdale’s cutouts. Ashleigh Cummings (“Pork Pie,” “NOS4A2”) as Pippa is not as good as Wright, but she manages to deliver a pleasant and simple performance in the sea of actors trying to keep their heads above water.
Without a doubt the biggest stumble of this film is the script, and not just for reasons of poor dialogue. It makes sense of hire screenwriter Peter Straughan. He’s an accomplished playwright and wrote the screenplays for “Frank (2014)” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” However, his most recent job was the screenplay for the abysmal 2017 adaptation of “The Snowman.”
It’s clear that his work here more closely resembled the half-melted thriller from a few years back. Characters are stiff and speak extremely eloquently, regardless of their age. It’s the opposite of a writer like Aaron Sorkin, who mixes a complicated and specific way of speaking with the messiness of casual encounters. Everyone always knows exactly what to say at exactly the right moment, as if the characters they’re playing are being fed lines through an earpiece. The entire film has a thick air of privilege, as if someone wearing 15 million-dollar pants waltzed in and farted up the entire theatre.
Having a film focused around characters with immense wealth and privilege doesn’t immediately damn the film, but the way in which they’re presented here quickly becomes insufferable. Films like “The Princess Diaries,” “Arthur (1981),” “Legally Blonde,” hell, even “Iron Man” have characters with immense wealth and privilege, but it’s worked into the story in ways that make sense. Here, it seems so lazy, like an afterthought. Characters talk at length about antiques, painters, going for sailing weekends in Maine, and it all feels hollow. At no point does anyone ever appear to know what they’re talking about or to even be real people.
However, there’s a point where thing shift. Maybe it’s because the film is stupidly long at 2 hours and 20 minutes, with a second act that not only feels pointless, but literally is pointless to the overall plot. But something happens. Things become amusing, laughable even. The tone hasn’t changed, but things become so overblown and ridiculous, that it turns from frustrating to hysterical. It becomes a gorgeously shot train wreck, and starts to have more in common with the bizarre watch-ability of the similarly over-privileged Kardashian shows that the Oscar-bait films it’s trying to imitate.
At the very least, the last 30 minutes becomes even more weirdly engaging. It could just be because of a out of nowhere mobster movie subplot, or the headache inducing way it wraps everything up, but there’s something weird intriguing about the ending, as it all spirals into nonsense and veers straight off a cliff.
This should have been a resounding success. This adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, by an Oscar nominated director, from a star-studded cast, and a writer who’s even done pretty admirable things. It’s a complete nosedive on everything but a technical level. It may be amusing and even funny it it’s drawn out, ridiculous nature towards the end, but that doesn’t change the fact that someone should’ve fed this bird to a street cat. 1/5
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