The Goldfinch movie review

MOVIE TITLE:    The Goldfinch 

                                                                              AVAILABLE ON DVD & STREAMING on DEC 3, 2019

RATING:   R

LENGTH: 2 hours,  29  minutes      (Considering Donna Tartt’s novel was 800 pages long, the movie length seems appropriate.)

Movie Review Mom GRADE:  B-

IN A NUTSHELL:

This heartbreaking coming-of-age drama is the film adaptation of Donna Tartt’s New York Times bestselling novel The Goldfinch: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. I haven’t read the book, but I’ll share a few insights from those who have.  It would have been interesting to see a film adaptation actually written by Donna Tartt.  Apparently, her agent signed away her rights without permission because Donna would receive a ton of money.  Instead, Donna would have rather written the screenplay to protect the integrity of her book.

This is the first collaboration between Amazon Studios and Warmer Brothers.  Unfortunately, the movie had a terrible movie release but maybe more viewers will appreciate it when it comes out on DVD and streaming (December 3, 2019).  It’s a bit heady and artsy-fartsy, so not everyone is going to like it.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

• Kids will be completely bored out of their minds and not interested in this movie.
• Talk of people’s deaths
• Some profanity. Half of the many F-bombs are spoken by young boys.  I hate swearing, but I especially hate it when kids swear.  A little girl says a religious exclamation.
• Talk of a bombing
• Two boys flip the bird (the finger, not an actual bird.)
• Talk of alcoholism. Kids drink alcohol, smoke, and inhale drugs.  Two boys do drugs and then experience hallucinations.
• You see a woman in a bikini by the pool.
• A father kicks his son. Another father slaps his son.
• A guy gets shot and you see some blood.
• Mother/son relationships
• Dishonesty
• A boy kisses another boy.  You see two boys hugging in bed.

THEMES:

• Accepting responsibility for your actions
• Immortality
• Living a trapped life
• Loss
• The influence others have on your life.
• Being in love with the wrong person
• Fate
• Art, music, and antiques

THINGS I LIKED:

• Both Oakes Fegley and Ansel Elgort did a great job as Theodore Decker, a troubled boy who experiences horrible loss and tragedy in his young life.
• The talented cast includes standouts Nicole Kidman, Luke Wilson, Sarah Paulson, Finn Wolfhard, and Jeffrey Wright.
• You see how the trajectory of Theo’s life changes based on the people he’s around.  Let that be a lesson to you.  Choose your friends wisely.
• There is some bouncing back and forth in time that might confuse some viewers.
• The painting that’s featured in the film is an actual work of art by Carel Fabritius from 1654 called The Goldfinch and is now on display in the Hague, Netherlands.
• I loved the melancholy music.
• I’m a sucker for twists.
• The painting of the Goldfinch symbolizes very well how Theo was chained to his past.  He could never be free to fly until he could let it go.  We learn that it was his mother’s favorite painting, so to him, the painting represented how he thought he could hold on to her.
•  

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

• The story seems a bit flat and yet melodramatic at the same time.  Ansel Elgort does a fine job, but the movie really drags when his sullen character is on the screen.  The part of the movie that featured Oakes Fegley was heartbreaking but I felt more engaged when he was on screen.
• The family lives in Las Vegas way out in the desert, which makes the city look like a ghost town.  The book addresses the seclusion that Theo felt more.
• It’s a very slow burn.  The movie very feels long, yet people who have read the book say that it wasn’t long enough to successfully cover the complex relationships in the story and the plot.
• There are some characters that come and go and you’re never quite sure which ones are supposed to be relevant to the plot.
• I don’t quite understand the movie poster.  Is the boy supposed to represent a bird, like in the piece of art featured in the film?  Does he have his shirt off to represent how he was thrust naked into the world without much support?
• A boy kisses another boy but the movie never explains what that was all about.  Was it just a friendly European-type kiss or something alluding to homosexuality?  It was never addressed again in the film.  You also see the same two beds hug in bed, but again, you can’t quite tell if more was going on.
• It was so sad to watch adults constantly give Theo prescription pills as a solution to his grief.

INTERESTING LINES:

• “We all feel afraid sometimes.” – (Nicole Kidman)
• “We’re so accustomed to disguise ourselves from others that, in the end, we become disguised from ourselves.” – adult Theo Decker    (Ansel lElgort)
• “Look at us now…almost like people.” –  Kitsey Barbour    (Willa Fitzgerald)
• “You want food? We have bread, sugar.” – Young Boris  (Finn Wolfhard)
• “Maybe sometimes good can come from bad.” –    older Boris Pavilkovsky    (Aneurin Barnard)
• “Things don’t last.” –   Theo’s mother     (Hailey Wist)

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@TrinaBoice