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"The Goldfinch" should be called "CliffsNotes: The Movie" because after watching this pedestrian film adaptation, I now know the 3 billion plot points of Donna Tartt's 2013 novel. And, like mowing a colorless cheat sheet, I still have no idea what's great about it.
We are witnessing more than ten years of the life of Theodore Decker, who was struck at the age of 13 when her mother was killed in a bomb attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He survives the tragedy and pockets the titular painting, hiding the rare work of his life.
Alone and traumatized, Theo (Oakes Fegley) is sent to live with the Barbour family in the Upper East Side. Nicole Kidman is Mrs. Cellophane as a matriarch of the family.
As soon as Theo finds his happiness with the WASP, his puppet pop (Luke Wilson) arrives and trains the boy in Las Vegas to come live with him and his trash girlfriend Xandra (Sarah Paulson). With all the changes of guardians, Theo's story can sometimes look like that of Little Orphan Annie, but without funny songs or memorable characters.
However, there is only one fantastic creation: Boris, played by Finn Wolfhard, 16 years old. What talent the star of "Stranger Things" is becoming, containing every ounce of anxiety and suburban humor that John Cusack and Matthew Broderick had at his age.
This time, he plays a Russian goth-ish teenager who has traveled all over the world all his life and who becomes a fast friend and a confidante of Theo in Vegas. Fegley finally animates in his scenes with the skinny actor, and their childish pleasure seems authentic. When the part of Wolfhard's film is over, the same goes for the film.
But, there is still an hour to go. Theo (now Ansel Elgort) becomes an antique dealer in New York and works alongside the mentor he's encountered when he was a child (Jeffrey Wright). It is in their shop that a dramatic revelation on the painting of the goldfinch endangers its whole existence.
There is a lot of blahdy-blah art and culture in this film, but the way it is discussed is cold and lifeless, like a bad NPR hearing. Do you remember when Glenn Close passionately spoke about the literature in "The Wife" with great conviction? Here, you do not believe for a second that one of these actors does not know the painting well.
Or acting from elsewhere. If it was a comment on a Brooks Brothers announcement, Elgort would have a eulogy. Theo adult wears flawless costumes and has much better hair than those who sold you your coffee table. But Elgort, a normally qualified man, offers nothing real under custom jackets to make us take care of us.
"The Goldfinch" would have been better as a mini-series, in which writers and actors could really take the time to give body to his car of clown characters. But, simultaneously managing to break everything and ruin the book, director John Crowley and writer Peter Straughan killed two birds with one stone.
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