Dir. John Crowley (trailer)
Although a critical failure at the box-office, The Goldfinch is not as bad as critics and audiences made it out to be. While the film is definitely not for everyone, I don't think it deserved all the hate that it got. Adapted from a massive, Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Goldfinch is nearly 3 hours long and by the second hour, you really begin to feel the length of the movie, which is unfortunately when the big reveal happens.
Told through flashbacks, the film is strongest when focusing on young Theo, played by Oakes Fegley, as he moves from home to home following a bombing that took his mother's life. As Theo copes with the circumstances of his new reality, he becomes intertwined with various people who will go onto change the course of his life. An affluent family, the Barbour's, led by an always great Nicole Kidman, first take Theo in until his money hungry father (Luke Wilson) shows up to drag him off to Las Vegas. There he meets a Russian classmate, Boris (played by Finn Wolfhard), who shows him the world of drugs and drinking for the first time.
While weaving together pieces of his life, the present day Theo, played by Ansel Elgort, is an antique dealer working with a childhood mentor of his in New York. He reunites with the Barbour family, and later with Boris (played by Dunkirk's Aneurin Barnard). Every long-lost connection that Theo encounters seems to be by chance, meeting on a sidewalk or by walking into a strange bar that sets him onto a new course in life.
Although filmed beautifully, large parts of the film are hard to connect with personally. Many of the characters are overly pretentious and don't come off as real people that you would actually meet out in the world. The characters and overly long runtime are most likely the reason that audiences and critics did not flock to the film as much as the movie studios had hoped.
I do recommend this film to fans of sweeping dramatic movies, such as Doctor Zhivago. Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography alone is worth watching for, as each scene seems like a painting with carefully selected, muted colors.
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Recommended for fans of: Manchester By the Sea (2016), drama, A Single Man (2009), Atonement (2007)
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