The Goldfinch (John Crowley, 2019)
I had no hopes for The Goldfinch. The only reason I put it on was to fall asleep to visions of Ansel Elgort. And hells no, I didn't read Donna Tartt's 2013 Pulitzer Prize winner although I did start and abandon it five years ago. But it held me until 3:30 a.m., my affection only slightly diminished as its 149 minutes came to a close.
I suspect the critical savaging it received had a lot to do with the deep connection readers form with an 800-page behemoth. Shorn of that albatross, I was free to marvel at the most moving portrait of grief in a mainstream American film since Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010). These are not films I normally fall for - middlebrow, well-meaning, Oscar-bound, director-effacing. But when they work, they do so less by a masterful gestalt than via indelibly etched moments. So I don't much care that The Goldfinch suffers from structural elephantiasis. Sure, the thing prattles on and on, especially with a ridiculous international espionage subplot meant to juice all the heavy-handedness out of the goldfinch symbol. And Tartt wields death as a hyperbolic story device rather than an unavoidable fact of life. She kills off more characters than Leatherface.
But always the bloat detumesces for a quiet trill that adds more emotional heft than forward progression to the narrative. The third-act reckoning between Pippa (Ashleigh Cumming) and the adult Theo (Elgort). Hobie (Jeffrey Wright) welcoming back young Theo (Oakes Fegley). Young Boris (Aneurin Barnard) holding Theo in bed after a nightmare. The legs of Theo and Andy Barbour (Ryan Foust) dangling off a bed mere hours after the central tragedy. Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman) saying goodbye to Theo, her Park-Avenue resolve ever so slightly thawed. Both The Goldfinch and Rabbit Hole share a major asset in Kidman, my vote for the finest actress of our generation. Her sense of underplaying lends the scenes between Mrs. Barbour and young Theo an unbearable delicacy, revealing a woman on the precipice of discovering a new wrinkle in motherhood.
Even the bloat serves a crucial thematic function - to delineate a community of care that transcends the family. Life is grimly unfair in The Goldfinch. But it's also a film of havens, of moments when we can finally exhale.
Grade: A-minus
I suspect the critical savaging it received had a lot to do with the deep connection readers form with an 800-page behemoth. Shorn of that albatross, I was free to marvel at the most moving portrait of grief in a mainstream American film since Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell, 2010). These are not films I normally fall for - middlebrow, well-meaning, Oscar-bound, director-effacing. But when they work, they do so less by a masterful gestalt than via indelibly etched moments. So I don't much care that The Goldfinch suffers from structural elephantiasis. Sure, the thing prattles on and on, especially with a ridiculous international espionage subplot meant to juice all the heavy-handedness out of the goldfinch symbol. And Tartt wields death as a hyperbolic story device rather than an unavoidable fact of life. She kills off more characters than Leatherface.
But always the bloat detumesces for a quiet trill that adds more emotional heft than forward progression to the narrative. The third-act reckoning between Pippa (Ashleigh Cumming) and the adult Theo (Elgort). Hobie (Jeffrey Wright) welcoming back young Theo (Oakes Fegley). Young Boris (Aneurin Barnard) holding Theo in bed after a nightmare. The legs of Theo and Andy Barbour (Ryan Foust) dangling off a bed mere hours after the central tragedy. Mrs. Barbour (Nicole Kidman) saying goodbye to Theo, her Park-Avenue resolve ever so slightly thawed. Both The Goldfinch and Rabbit Hole share a major asset in Kidman, my vote for the finest actress of our generation. Her sense of underplaying lends the scenes between Mrs. Barbour and young Theo an unbearable delicacy, revealing a woman on the precipice of discovering a new wrinkle in motherhood.
Even the bloat serves a crucial thematic function - to delineate a community of care that transcends the family. Life is grimly unfair in The Goldfinch. But it's also a film of havens, of moments when we can finally exhale.
Grade: A-minus
Labels: middlebrow
posted by Kevin John at 10:35 AM
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