"Goldfinch" bombs strong at US box office

"The Goldfinch" by director John Crowley has just made its debut at one of the worst openings ever for Warner Bros. Pictures. Winner $ 870,000 on 2,542 screens, adapting Donna Tartt's best-selling starring Ansel Elgort is the troubled survivor of a box-office terrorist attack as a result of poor critics and d & # 39; 39, a poorly received film from the Toronto International Film Festival. It is unlikely that $ 3 million will be exceeded at the weekend box office.

The writing was on the walls when even sprawling epic stars publicly declared that they wanted the film to be something else. Sarah Paulson, star of "The Goldfinch", told Deadline: "In the world of my dreams, they would have made a mini-series in four parts, each section having its own evening, so you can exploit everything in this book Elgort, meanwhile, he would have liked the film to be a play, according to a recent Huffington Post interview.

"The Goldfinch", Crowley's sequel to "Brooklyn", nominated for the best film, was excoriated by TIFF critics. With a budget of more than $ 40 million and a release on September 13, the film was not well placed to succeed.

In his review, David Ehrlich, critic of IndieWire, wrote: "The big problem of 'The Goldfinch' – a lifeless film that does not consist of scenes, but an annoying clutter of other smaller problems piled on top of each other like children inside a trench coat – it's is that he confuses his raw material with a great work of art. This critical error is not an overestimation of Donna Tartt's highly successful novel of the same name, but a false, categorical characterization. Maybe even a must. "

One of the ambitious elements of the film's set is a reconstruction of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which is then destroyed by a bombing at the beginning of the film. The film covers years in Elgort's life as Theodore, who falls into drug addiction and criminal activities following the death of his mother. This is Donna Tartt's first novel – including the soap opera to read absolutely "The Secret Story" and Southern Gothic melodrama "The Boyfriend" – to be adapted to the big screen.

It's safe to say that the Oscar debate for "The Goldfinch", already muffled, ends here.

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