I really, really should have known better. Endless negative reviews from TIFF and from screenings earlier this week warned me and yet, I did not listen. I had very high hopes for this film and truly wished that it was one of the rare cases of a trailer being unintentionally misleading. John Crowley's The Goldfinch is a frustratingly convoluted and directionally challenged film that makes its audience really wonder how much longer they can tolerate such unfair treatment. This movie lacks any semblance of coherence in what should make a piece of cinema generally understandable and does so in such a way that made me wonder where the creatives' minds were during its production. While the script itself is not horrible and the story had so much potential to be a beautiful tale of processing grief and emerging anew, The Goldfinch completely abandons that to tell an even more confusing story of a young boy's multiple tragedies. The biggest tragedy being, however, that this will most likely win Best Editing come February.
Theo Decker (Oakes Fegley) is a young boy living with his mother in New York and as she dies in an unfortunate bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he finds himself temporarily living with a new family under the care of Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman). Harboring a stolen painting and the grief of all of his past mistakes, Theo in his older age (Ansel Elgort) struggles to come to terms with the things that shaped his childhood and how his secrets could ultimately lead to his downfall. Writing this synopsis of the film might have been the most difficult thing I have done in a while. The ambiguity of describing what this film is about is truly harrowing because even after trying to decode this film for two and a half hours, I still fail to even see what its significance could possibly be. This film tried its hardest to be an exploration of processing grief after a tragedy, which I assume is what Donna Tartt's original novel did much better. What John Crowley is unable to do, however, is translate that message to an interesting narrative on screen. The Goldfinch had every bit of potential to be a beautiful and uplifting story about how one boy can overcome his past while keeping its memories intact but throws in so many different tonal elements that only muster what it was trying to say. A little bit of coming-of-age story here and a little bit of uncharacteristic writing there makes this protagonist a confusing and misleading character to root for. Not to mention that it completely disregards what makes the story important to tell in favor of misguided subplots.
Adapted from the novel of the same name, the script by Peter Straughan only adds to the muffled nothingness of Crowley's direction. His script is utterly horrible, filled with cliché dialogue and unmotivated character development which made no sense whatsoever. This lack of rational storytelling is what hurts the film so much. Upon seeing its trailer, I was so confused as to what this film revolved around. Was it a boy involved in an art heist or was it a boy trying to emotionally process the death of his mother? I was hoping that these questions would be resolved throughout the film but Crowley and Straughan only managed to confuse me more. So many scenes and character motivations throughout this movie only happened due to pure coincidence or no explanation at all. As young Theo was escaping the bombing (in which his mother was meeting his principal for some unexplained reason?), he is given a ring by a man and told to steal the painting The Goldfinch. This only begins the trail of unexplained arcs as Theo halfheartedly holds on to this painting for his entire life. Being the damn title of the film, one would expect a reason as to why this particular piece of art held so much value and meant so much to people, but these emotional connections were never even attempted to be explored. So many various subplots existed in this film, such as Theo's antique, woodworking career adopted from his mentor Hobie (Jeffrey Wright) and Theo's unfaithful engagement to his fiancé Kitsey (Willa Fitzgerald), that existed only to shaft him even more. These aspects of Theo's story felt like they were only written for the sake of telling a more widely-developed world, but failed miserably. The Goldfinch truly takes such an important story and grossly exploits it to make room for incredibly shitty screenwriting.
Filmmakers should never have to assume that their audiences have read a novel that their film is based on. Faithfulness to a film's source material is a whole other argument but regardless, a film should be able to tell a clear story and provide some amount of narrative satisfaction. Perhaps Crowley assumed that everyone has read this book before, but he must have left out certain scenes that make this movie even tangible. Kelley Dixon's editing also destroyed any hope for letting me breathe during this film. The choppy and uncomfortable use of cutting in this movie is painfully apparent and reminded me, very unfortunately, of the stylistically ugly cuts in Bohemian Rhapsody. Luckily, the performances, for the most part, were decent and the cinematography from Roger Deakins was expectedly sharp and beautiful. Ansel Elgort and Oakes Fegley were the definite standouts from this movie, as they thankfully embodied what was even available for their shared character. Nicole Kidman was mildly good as Theo's temporary guardian but was really only there to deliver a lot of piercing stares. And then comes Finn Wolfhard and Aneurin Barnard's shared character of Boris. While Barnard was passable, Wolfhard was such a letdown. It's a shame to see an amazingly talented young actor like him cast in a role like this and his annoyingly hyperbolic Ukrainian accent did not do him any good, either.
To any dedicated fans of Donna Tartt's acclaimed novel: I'm so deeply sorry. While I have not read the book myself, I can only assume how much better and more moving this story must have been on the page rather than on screen. The Goldfinch is an atrocious slap in the face to the touching story from Tartt and a perfect example of a novel that is best left without a movie adaptation. This film tries its absolute hardest to be Oscar bait, but executes almost every aspect horribly wrong, unfortunately becoming one of the worst films I have seen this year.
My Rating: ★★
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