'The Goldfinch' Review—A Beautiful Mess

Roger Deakins could take a dumpster and make it look like the most appetizing, beautiful thing in the world.

And in some ways, that’s what he did with this movie.

Here we go!

The Goldfinch is a drama written by Peter Straughan and directed by John Crowley. The movie is based on the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name written by Donna Tartt, and it stars Ansel Elgort as a young man whose mother died in a bombing when he was a child, as he takes interest in a painting called The Goldfinch.

When I looked on Wikipedia to give the writer and director credit, I only just found out that this movie’s story was related to “art forgery.” That should show you how little I cared about this movie.

Now, before I delve into those negative thoughts, I’m gonna start with the positive; first off, Roger Deakins’s cinematography is, as per usual, astounding. Every shot in this movie looks so aesthetically beautiful and Deakins proved once again that he is possibly the best cinematographer working today.

And I thought the performances in this movie were great. Oakes Fegley did a wonderful job as young Theo, and I thought the performances from everyone were great. Everyone feels very real and natural as their characters, and I thought the casting choices were perfect in this movie.

But despite the strong aspects, this movie was very disappointing. I had wanted to see this for a while, and I was even expecting a few Oscar nods when I saw the trailer, but when I left the theater, I knew that I had watched something that wasn’t as good as it could have been.

This movie’s story is not bad, but the way it’s told simply is not interesting. It has a nonlinear narrative, where we see two different timelines (one with Theo as a kid and one as an adult); however, there isn’t anything interesting done with the nonlinear structure.

It simply didn’t do anything unique or intelligent with the way the movie was structured when they had a lot of opportunities to allow the nonlinear structure to enhance the storytelling. Instead, this movie could have been linear and it would have barely changed anything.

The film is also 2 hours and 29 minutes long. And I don’t mind long movies (I gave positive reviews to Avengers: Endgame and It: Chapter Two), but this movie’s story doesn’t seem to justify this runtime. A lot of this movie is pretty slow-paced, and there are scenes that don’t always seem to be adding to the actual narrative.

A lot of this movie is spent on Theo’s life and the tragic events that happen to him as a child. And while these scenes were able to make me sympathize with our protagonist, 80 percent of this movie doesn’t feel like it adds to the actual story involving a life of crime, art forgery, and The Goldfinch.

There are also three separate times in this movie where the plot of the movie moves forward because Theo just coincidentally runs into someone he knows in the street. This happens THREE times. It felt like an incredibly lazy way of telling the story and it seemed like the writer really wanted you to suspend some disbelief for this movie.

While this movie does a good job of developing its characters, it doesn’t do a good job of giving them arcs and showing how the events that occur actually change who they are.

And as a result of that, I personally didn’t even care to know what happened to Theo after the movie ended, because I just didn’t really care for what happened to him when he was an adult.

There’s also a storyline in the movie involving Theo and his secret love for a girl named Pippa. I liked watching their relationship when they were children, but when we see them as adults, the storyline simply doesn’t seem to go anywhere and it feels detracted from the rest of the story.

However, I did like Theo’s relationship with a Ukranian boy named Boris, and I loved Finn Wolfhard’s performance. His Russian accent was spot-on, and I think a lot of the way this movie is shot and edited is still wonderful.

Overall, this movie is a bit of a mess in terms of its story. It’s got good characters and wonderful cinematography, but I found this to be very disappointing and dull, and I don’t recommend this movie.

I’m gonna give The Goldfinch a 5/10 (C-).

There’s a scene in this movie where Theo and Boris are playing, and Boris, out of nowhere, bitch-slaps Theo... what the hell?