This was sort of a momentous occasion because friend whose only fault is that she doesn’t go to any movies came with us on this night of nights to see the famously awful movie, an adaptation of a famously controversial book that critics hated and readers loved.
I think my first reaction to seeing this trailer in theaters was that it seemed like an excellently crafted trailer. I stand by that assertion.
Since we’re so far from the zeitgeist of the film at this point (in the second week of Nov 2019), I think it’s worth saying that I came out of this fairly satisfied with a few aspects of the film. I did not feel, like my Friends and Wife, that I had been betrayed and lied to in order to sit through an almost three hour film about furniture. I was mostly pretty happy with the slow burn action elements of the film once we caught up to the future. I liked the turn of the film, the fact that it doesn’t morally obligate the protagonist’s moral culpability for his actions, but rather puts into sharper focus the importance of his continued involvement.
The slow movement of the first act, which irritated Wife, was to me a way of building up the stakes for Young Theo Decker (who Friend describes aptly as, and who will be henceforth referred to only as “Young Old Man”), a way of showing us that the universe of this story is not always constrained by moral outcomes. Patience and learning are not always rewarded, but out of this unfairness, sometimes we can still find spontaneous acts of goodness. Goldfinch is in part about the mundanity of evil. It’s interested in emotional build ups and the little deaths delivered by words and broken promises.
The second act, when Theo makes his move introduces what truly is the villain of the film, but for reasons that are entirely unintentional. Finn Wolfhard’s Ukranian (??) accent is so bad it will literally take you out of the movie. If you can bash your skull against your seat hard enough to stop hearing his voice, you will be able to make it to the third act and some pretty good action sequences. Also, Young Old Man becomes Ansel Elgort not as a Baby Driver, which is what we all came to see the movie for in the first place, right?
As someone who was unaware of the structure of the story going in, the third act is pretty novel at storytelling. It’s got a good mix of romance and drama, moves in a different direction than the first two, while still meditating on the themes of violence and desire.
I’m not entirely unopposed to you seeing this film.
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