The Goldfinch **** (2019, Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Boyd Gaines, Luke Wilson, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, Jeffrey Wright) – Movie Review

Director John Crowley’s smart 2019 drama The Goldfinch stars Oakes Fegley as a 13-year-old boy, Theo Decker, whose mother is killed in a terrorist bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is reluctantly taken in by the chilly, wealthy Upper East Side family of Mrs and Mr Barbour (Nicole Kidman, Boyd Gaines). Mrs Barbour takes a shine to the kid, and wants him to stay. Even as an adult, the boy has mother issues (‘In Amsterdam, I dreamt I saw my mother again’) – and father issues too as he has been abandoned by his drunken lout of a dad – but Mrs Barbour could help to fill the void.

Crucially, confused in the dust and rubble of the terrorist attack, Theo has walked out of the Museum with a priceless Dutch painting, The Goldfinch, tucked under his arm. He also has the signet ring of the man standing next to him at the time of the attack, a clue that leads him to the antiques store of Hobie (Jeffrey Wright), who befriends him.

But, just when things are going OK for Theo, then his abusive father Larry (Luke Wilson) turns up with his slutty girlfriend Xandra (Sarah Paulson). The kid is dragged off by dad to a desolate suburban Las Vegas, where the only neighbour is another abused boy, Boris (Finn Wolfhard), a Ukrainian kid. They become the closest of friends.

Time goes by, and Theo becomes Ansel Elgort, now an antiques dearer, who is planning to marry Mrs Barbour’s daughter Kitsey Barbour (Willa Fitzgerald), when creepy collector Lucius Reeve (Denis O’Hare) turns up, having rumbled Theo’s theft of The Goldfinch.

With the screenplay by Peter Straughan, based on the bestselling Pulitzer prize novel by Donna Tartt, this is a posh, ambitious, satisfying epic drama, with so much plot and so many ideas flying around that it demands at least a second, maybe third viewing. The narrative is engrossing and inspired, easily overcoming, or justifying the film’s sedate pace and extended two and a half hour running time. Some viewer patience and intelligence are required, There is a lot of dialogue to listen to, all of it interesting or involving. If you lose patience, there is plenty to look at and listen to. Roger Deakins’s cinematography make the movie look a treat, the score and soundtrack are subtle mood enhancers.

Unexpectedly, the best half of the film is the one with Oakes Fegley as Theo, especially his scenes with Kidman, Wilson and Wolfhard, all of them electrifying. Fegley just strides through his huge role as Theo like a confident veteran trouper. Kidman, Wilson and Wolfhard are absolutely ideal, note perfect. The later sequences with Ansel Elgort and Aneurin Barnard as the adult Boris are less thrilling or persuasive, though still good. Elgort falters a little, seems a little nervous and hesitant, with the role of damaged victim not playing to his strengths of boy charmer. However, here he is convincingly in spectacles and smart suit, a dodgy art thieving antiques dealer. How perfect he would be for the young Tom Ripley in a remake of The Talented Mr Ripley.

The film has apparently toned down from the book the ambiguous sexuality of Finn Wolfhard’s character Boris, similar to the one he plays in the 2017 It, but the mutual attraction of Theo and Boris is very clear anyway, and delicately handled too.

It’s not a shock that the box office is weak. On a $45,000,000 cost, it has grosses less than $5,000,000 in the US, $6,677,125 elsewhere. However, you would think fans of the novel and star Elgort might have made it a hit.

Irish director John Crowley is the maker of InterMission (2003), Boy A (2007), and Brooklyn (2015).

The Goldfinch is painted by Carel Fabritius (1654). It belongs to the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Netherlands. Donna Tartt first saw it 20 years before the publication of her novel, which spent 30 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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