REVIEW: The Goldfinch

By: Talley Davidson

It was the night of the premier, and the theater was completely empty. I was sitting all

alone in my row with my crumpled ticket in that I bought online beforehand, assuming the debut of “The Goldfinch,” based on Donna Tartt’s 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, would be full.

Any empty theater on the film’s opening night would typically seem unusual, but on a Friday

night in a college town, most students find other things to do than spend a whopping $13.50 on a movie ticket. Nevertheless, while the empty theater didn’t scream “SUCCESS!” for this film, I had a headache by the end of it from the amount of beautiful, devastating and captivating emotion it put me through.

“The Goldfinch” is based in early twenty first century New York City, just three years

after the 2001 terrorist attack on the twin towers. Yet, while bombing and terrorism are the

catalyst to the rising action of this movie, it’s not the focus. What the audience soon learns is that one bombing, one painting and one trivial teenage mistake are the perfect storm that ruins 13-year-old Theodore Decker’s (Ansel Elgort) life.

The film opens with Theo in an Amsterdam hotel room in the present day. His hands are bloody, the hotel room is trashed with drugs and the sky outside is a haunting navy. The voiceover is Theo himself racking his brain in agony to make sense of the mysterious felony he’s committed-- a robbery that all began during the life-altering terrorist attack back when he was 13.

The film transitions between the present day and his teenage years to allow the audience

to piece together the innocent crime of how Theo went from an angsty teenager standing in front of a famous painting moments before a bombing, to a tortured salesman with a depressing upbringing and daunting inner-demons.

What attracts the viewer to Theo’s problem is that his mother (Haily Wist) was killed

during the museum bombing all those years ago, and he continues to blame himself for her death until the present day. The director (John Crowley) manages to prolong the audience’s confusion for why Theo burdens himself for mother’s death and how he became an accomplice to a crucial piece of art being stolen from the Met--two critical points of the movie that change the course of his life.

I found this film to be dreadfully captivating. I’ve never felt more empathy for a character

in a film than for Theodore Decker. I appreciated how the director framed Theo’s flashbacks of museum bombing in a shallow depth of field in an eerie slow motion to allow the audience to piece together the clues of both his crime and parental heartbreak.

Though I didn’t read the novel beforehand, “The Goldfinch” film still allowed me to feel deeply. I experienced everything from sorrow for an orphan to wanderlust through Cowley’s choice of a classical music soundtrack and even pure dumbfoundedness for a teenager’s upbringing that was so perfectly horrible it would give a botoxed beauty worry lines.

The writers did an exquisite job of explaining the reasons behind the unsound decisions

made by humans like Theo who’ve experienced trauma and heartbreak in such a short period of time. “The Goldfinch” juxtaposes art, music, romance and friendship with perpetual tragedy to explain the impulsive actions people take in times of chaos.

"The Goldfinch” may have given me a headache from how convoluted Theo’s youth was,

but the acting was so believable, and the plot was so genius that I’m still pondering the inner

workings of the film half a week later. I wouldn’t see this movie again because, in simple terms, it was three hours of exhausting sadness.