The Goldfinch

When a big new film rides in on a wave of negative hype it always makes me really want to see it and make my own mind up. Writing off a film before you've seen it is one of the worst things about modern online movie discourse and it seems especially silly when it's one from an acclaimed director and adapted from a very popular novel. Surely it couldn't be that much of a disaster? Could it?

Theo Decker (Oakes Fegley) has lost his mother. Their trip to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is interrupted by a terrorist bomb that snuffs out her life and that of many others. Theo survives and in the aftermath commits a crime that follows him through the next 2 decades of his life. Decades which see him living with the rich Samantha Barbour (Nicole Kidman) and her family, in an abandoned Nevadan housing project and finally back in New York where everything comes full circle.

The Goldfinch is lovely looking parcel with nothing inside. A pretty bow holding a cube of flimsy cardboard together. Over it's interminable 2 and a half hour running time you'll keep watching and waiting for that one special moment that ties it all together, the scene that will give it all meaning and sadly it just never comes. The crime committed by Theo that he holds onto is his way of holding on to the past, holding onto a time when his life made sense. Unlike Theo, we the audience, have little to grasp apart from a sore arse, a couple of putrid Russian accents and a macguffin that comes to nothing at all. Interesting little moments (a kiss, a coincidence, a bloodstain) that feel like they should mean something pop up every now and then just to pique your interest before being forgotten about just as fast. Frustrating.

It's glacial pace doesn't help matters. There's nothing here that couldn't have been spun through in 90 minutes. Seriously. I haven't read the book but have heard it was gutted during its adaption into a film. Judging by the boredom that made it onscreen god only knows what was cut out. More passages of Theo moping? More shite parenting? More stoned preteens lounging about in the desert? More moments of Nicole Kidman looking maudlin? When you find yourself looking regularly at the time on your phone you know a film isn't working.

Kidman though, you have to hand it to her, once again she's the best thing onscreen. Her Samantha is the only character who won't bore/annoy the face off you. With her you at least get a sense of warmth kept in check by her place in society and as such she's the only person onscreen you'll be invested in. Everyone else is either dull or ludicrous. Jeffrey Wright's deathly serious antiques dealer. Luke Wilson's prickish gambler. Finn Wolfhard/Aneurin Barnard's Boris, stuck with an accent that will have you hoping for his death after 30 seconds. And Theo himself. A dud of a main character. Yeah, he's been psychologically scarred but Ansel Elgort as the older Theo plays him like he's an actual void. He feels more like a description of a person than an actual person.

John Crowley's last film was based on a novel too, Brooklyn. That was was an out and out success carried along by an effortless performance from Saoirse Ronan. Anything would look inferior compared to that but The Goldfinch comes off especially whiffy. It's a whole pile of zero. So called prestige film making that lacks any bit of soul or life or bite or excitement.

It will probably win a ton of Oscars.