Starring: Oakes Fegley, Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Luke Wilson, Finn Wolfhard, Sarah Paulson, Aneurin Bernard
Director: John Crowley
Release date: 27th September 2019
A young man, alone in a messy Amsterdam hotel room, is contemplating suicide… Flash back in time, a young 13 year old boy named Theo (Oakes Fegley) has lost his mother in a bomb explosion in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One day he ends up going to live with the well to do Barbour family in New York for a while. He goes to find an antiques shop he was told about after the explosion and meets a guy called Hobie (Jeffrey Wright). Theo explains what happened after the explosion and Hobie is intrigued by the young man who has walked into his shop. He tells Hobie about an old man he met after the explosion, and that the man gave him a ring to bring to the antiques shop… The man in question was named Blackwell and was Hobie’s business partner. Theo arrives home to find that his dad, who he hasn’t seen in many years, has come to claim him. Theo goes with him and the family move to the outskirts of Las Vegas. It’s not long before the lonely boy makes a new friend named Boris and it’s not long before Boris introduces him to some new pastimes.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name by the American author, Donna Tartt, ‘The Goldfinch’ is a tale of loss and coming of age, published in 2013. It spent an incredible thirty weeks in the New York Times bestseller list and was a No. 1 bestseller in both Finland and France.
Coming in at 2hrs 29mins, The Goldfinch is a very long old film, and looking at the size of the novel, you can kind of see why. That being said though, it does meander a tiny bit in places and to be honest it’s kind of puzzling why it’s as long as it is. As with most long novels that have been made into films, you’d think it was reasonable to tell the story as close to the original as possible, but it’s probably not always needed.
‘The Goldfinch’ is a fantastic story about a boy who after making a split second decision as a teenager is now having to live with the consequences of his actions.
If you like your films long and a teeny bit meandering, give this one a watch, though having said that, it is a great story and it’s worth giving it a watch.
Overall: 7/10
