The Goldfinch (2019)
Review of The Goldfinch (2019), directed by John Crowley
I’ve heard of the name Donna Tartt several times, not just because I’m writer, but because of her prominence in more mainstream culture. My interactions with her work tended to be stemming from the fact that her novels are basically the epitome of the Dark Academia aesthetic.
And perhaps that’s why I was turned off of ever reading Tartt’s work for awhile, because I find the Dark Academia aesthetic to be quite problematic.
It romanticizes privilege and white-dominance culture in a way that just doesn’t sit right with me. But I have seen a lot of Tartt’s books carefully laid out in a flat-lay of these aesthetic Instagram feeds again and again, striking in that Tartt was an icon of the movement, albeit unofficially.
The first time I encountered The Goldfinch was when I was working at my college’s library as a circulation assistant. I was shelving books when I was putting back a copy of The Goldfinch, and I turned over the book and read the synopsis. I didn’t care for the concept of tragedy driving the story, but was instead interested in the conversations about art and culture that it may offer the readers some insight.
I took a picture of the cover expecting myself to return to it eventually, but I never did. It took me stumbling upon this for free to watch on Amazon Prime Video one day to get me to finally watch it, and boy do I have some thoughts.
Let’s dive straight into this review.
After losing his mother to a bombing at a major NYC art museum, Theodore Decker's entire life shifts dramatically.
The Goldfinch has a little bit of everything in it. Our story starts with a bang, quite literally. Our protagonist, thirteen-year-old Theodore Decker, is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother when there’s a bombing. This will lead to feelings of guilt for the rest of Theodore’s life, because the only reason they were at the museum at the time is because he was set up for smoking at school—he befriended a troublemaker who blamed Theodore for the cigarettes.
Theo’s mother chose to take him to the museum before heading over to the school to chat with the principal, but as the explosion goes off, his mother is killed and a dying man entrusts Theo with the painting they were standing in front of: Carel Fabritius’ The Goldfinch (1654). The irony is not lost with this painting because the painter, Carel, was actually killed in an explosion while inside his art studio.
The painting plays an interesting role in this film because it represents everything that has happened to Theo. In a way, he is that bird chained and tethered to the painting itself and the trauma that was inflicted upon him by what happened at the MET. But not even that—wherever he goes, tragedy seems to follow.
His foster family, which he was taken from after his alcoholic father claims ownership of him and takes him away from the idyllic life in the massive NYC apartment of the Barbours, becomes splintered years later when Theo’s best friend, Andy, and his father drown while on a boating trip. Theo’s father has claimed he is now sober, but his behavior is clearly erratic, a sign to us, the viewers, that things are going to sour quite quickly. And they do when Theo is moved out to Las Vegas.
Theo finds solace in Boris, a Ukrainian kid who has also lost his mother tragically young. As Boris and Theo descend into drugs, Theo’s father begins trying to get money from Theo’s inheritance and Social Security, but that, too, ends tragically when the father is killed while drunk-driving.
We see how Theo is unable to let go of the past when we find out that he’s been hiding The Goldfinch in a storage locker, literally doing nothing with this priceless painting, and how he ends up engaged to Andy’s younger sister.
We then see Boris re-emerge in the storyline and how he actually stole The Goldfinch years ago and Theo just never noticed.
That’s a bit strange for me as a viewer how Theo never visits the painting, keeps it in a storage locker, and then never even checks up on it. That’s a sign that he’s clinging to it to keep the past alive as well as the promise he made to the dying man and his business partner, Hobie. The last arc of the movie is the violent struggle to get this painting back, but it’s all for nothing because a police raid recovers the painting.
There’s this sense of perception in this story about how art gives meaning and life to the different people it comes across. For Theo, when he looks at this painting, it reminds him of a tragic time of his life.
Perhaps that’s why he kept it in a storage unit; this painting literally represents how he’s chained to the past and his trauma, just like the bird chained in the painting. For Hobie, it represents what his partner ended up dying for, but for Boris, he’s used it to finance his criminal activities. Art is both a financial and an emotional commodity in this movie, giving it more nuanced meaning outside of just being something to look at.
Outside of that, I don’t really like the plot of this story. The interactions between the characters feel hollow and not very-fleshed out to the point where I found myself scratching my head in confusion, e.g. I think that Hobie definitely had a bigger role in the book.
I also didn’t agree with Theo’s decision to try and commit suicide after losing The Goldfinch—for someone who’s created his entire life, career, and fortune in the fakes business, if this painting had an intrinsic value outside of the emotional aspect, he could’ve just faked it. It’s not like the painting is gone forever—it’ll always be there in his memories.
What also really bothered me is how heavily the plot leans into coicidences to propel everything forward. It’s a coincidence that Theo and his mother were at the MET that day, that he’s given the painting, that his best friend and father happens to die. It’s also a coincidence that he meets all these people with tragic backstories, leads the life he lives, then is betrayed by the same kid that he originally found solace with.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a movie that was made because the book was popular and ended up winning big literary awards. Does that make it a good movie? No. I think if you’re a big fan of the book, then you’ll probably enjoy the movie, but if you’re a casual movie-goer you’re not going to be as interested in the content.
It’s hard to fit almost an eight-hundred page book into an average runtime that won’t bore your viewers, and while they probably did a decent job adapting it, the characters and their relationships merely felt hollow and transactional.
It does offer some interesting questions and insight into the meaning of art and authenticity in our lives, but, all in all, I find that the film fails to captivate in a way that’s unique or charming.
