"The Goldfinch" did not earn great box office receipts or receive rave reviews from the critics. But for lovers of art, the miracle of Dutch Baroque painting comes alive in a thriller with a compelling protagonist.
Little Theo is a boy who lost his mother in a bomb explosion at a museum when he was staring at a small painting of a goldfinch by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius. The painting then falls into Theo's lap when the antique dealer Welty Blackwell hands the painting off to the boy for safekeeping, prior to his own death. Theo struggles throughout the film with the task of "making things right" after he suffered a great personal loss in a traumatic event, then handled a multi-million-dollar painting like a hot potato.
The film toggles between timeframes as we watch the little boy grow up, then meet the adult Theo, who struggles with drug use and the fallout from a bad choice for a fiancée. The poor kid really didn't make any unethical decisions other than to poorly protect the painting. Did it not ever occur to him to simply return the painting to the museum?
The filmmakers could have been tidier in wrapping up loose ends in the narrative. It was never made clear if Theo would finally move on from Kitsey and marry his soul-mate Pippa. The re could have been more closure as well on the relationship of Theo with the kindest character in the film, Hobie. Once the painting is recovered, it is never clear whether Theo and Hobie can restore their friendship and finally turn the antique shop of Blackwell & Hobart into a solvent operation.
While the film's pacing was slow, the best scenes were those that provide background on the "The Goldfinch" and demonstrate that the loss of a precious work of art is "like a light going out in the universe." Indeed, the bonus track of the DVD of the film focused almost exclusively on the painting which is housed in The Hague in the Mauritshuis museum.
In the extras segment of the DVD, the curator of the Mauritshuis described the trompe l'oeil effect that the painter used to allow the viewer the sense of looking at a real bird. Fabritius studied with Rembrandt, and "The Goldfinch" was one of his final paintings. In real life, the painting miraculously survived the damage from a nearby warehouse fire. In the fictionalized film version, the tiny painting goes on quite a journey in multiple continents, before finally returning home.
Little Theo is a boy who lost his mother in a bomb explosion at a museum when he was staring at a small painting of a goldfinch by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius. The painting then falls into Theo's lap when the antique dealer Welty Blackwell hands the painting off to the boy for safekeeping, prior to his own death. Theo struggles throughout the film with the task of "making things right" after he suffered a great personal loss in a traumatic event, then handled a multi-million-dollar painting like a hot potato.
The film toggles between timeframes as we watch the little boy grow up, then meet the adult Theo, who struggles with drug use and the fallout from a bad choice for a fiancée. The poor kid really didn't make any unethical decisions other than to poorly protect the painting. Did it not ever occur to him to simply return the painting to the museum?
The filmmakers could have been tidier in wrapping up loose ends in the narrative. It was never made clear if Theo would finally move on from Kitsey and marry his soul-mate Pippa. The re could have been more closure as well on the relationship of Theo with the kindest character in the film, Hobie. Once the painting is recovered, it is never clear whether Theo and Hobie can restore their friendship and finally turn the antique shop of Blackwell & Hobart into a solvent operation.
While the film's pacing was slow, the best scenes were those that provide background on the "The Goldfinch" and demonstrate that the loss of a precious work of art is "like a light going out in the universe." Indeed, the bonus track of the DVD of the film focused almost exclusively on the painting which is housed in The Hague in the Mauritshuis museum.
In the extras segment of the DVD, the curator of the Mauritshuis described the trompe l'oeil effect that the painter used to allow the viewer the sense of looking at a real bird. Fabritius studied with Rembrandt, and "The Goldfinch" was one of his final paintings. In real life, the painting miraculously survived the damage from a nearby warehouse fire. In the fictionalized film version, the tiny painting goes on quite a journey in multiple continents, before finally returning home.