Why 'The Goldfinch' movie didn't work

'The Goldfinch' was released at the end of last year and it was met with harsh reviews from critics. Was the movie bad? I don't think so, I quite liked it when I first watched it, I thought it was brilliant. Because I liked it so much I decided to buy the book and read it in the span of a few days, despite its monumental size. As I was reading the book I began to realise what the movie did wrong and why it was met with such reviews even though it had such a perfect formula to succeed. Talented actors, great cinematography and a Pulitzer winning story.

If you haven't read the book or even watched the movie, this article will contain spoilers. I highly encourage you to watch the movie or even read the book, both great, but at the same time both flawed. Let me explain myself.

The Goldfinch was a book published in 2013, and it follows the life of Theodore Decker, a kid who happened to be in a museum at the time of a bombing which resulted in his mother's death. When he gets out of the museum he decides to steal a painting (The Goldfinch), because someone at the museum told him to take it.

This is basically all you need to know to understand the story if you have watched the movie or read the book I don't think I need to explain to you the entire plot, so let's get into the details. (Buckle up, I have a lot to say)

What the movie did wrong.

There was a lot of things that the movie got wrong when adapting this story, the main mistake was to try to tell the story in a non-linear way. It made it very confusing to understand for the average viewer, and when I got to watch it a second time after reading the book I wondered how did I even understand it in the first place.

For most of the movie, we follow the events from the perspective of Young Theo, which the actor made a great job at portraying. We know there was an explosion at the museum because we see glimpses of it through Theo's memories, but we never get to see the entire scene until the third act. How is the viewer supposed to understand why Theo stole the painting or the importance of him reaching out to Hobie if we don't get to see his conversation with Welty until the second act?

This was a key scene that set the pace of the entire book, and it was shown at the beginning of it because the book was explained linearly. We don't get to see the conversation between Welty and Theo at the museum until much later on in the movie, which confuses the viewer as to why Theo stole the painting and why he clung to it for so long.

The painting is obviously the main point of the entire movie, hence the title. If you have read the book you will understand how the painting can represent different things, some say that it represents Theo's heart, or that it represents his mother. No matter how you see it, it always links back to that day his mother died. That painting was very important for his mother, but in the movie, they don't show how important the painting was to his mother.

This is, for me, what the main problem was, all in all, it was a storytelling problem.

You could argue that another big problem that the movie had was not portraying Theo's an Boris' relationship the right way. But this goes better linked with the book. In my opinion, both the movie and the book are flawed and, surprisingly, what I like about the film is something that I don't like about the book and the other way around. So it is a great combo. If you have seen the movie and feel like you're lacking something, definitely check out the book. I will try to write a more in depth review of the book.