The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Donna Tarter's The Goldfinch is Controversial. The protagonist's encounters and inner world perceptions have the fantasy and drug-addicting psychedelics of literary youth floating in the air, mixed with Dickens' David Copperfield-style plot imitation, as well as crimes, detectives, suspense and other businesses. The stimulating element of the novel also played a borderline ball on the topic of the same sex. It can be said that this is a work with too many elements, the meaning is unclear, and both literary, artistic and commercial are reluctant to let go. However, Donna Tate's delicate and vivid text makes this 800-plus page novel not boring and obscure, and it is very friendly to the audience, which is also the reason for the popularity of this novel. Also because of its description of same-sex ambiguity, this novel is especially favored by Hollywood LGBT people and a large number of fans. In the past, Li Peisi, Li Jianjun, Zachary Quinto, Ezra Miller, etc. were warmly recommended and even expressed their desire to participate in the show. Later, the fan circle girl movie became a spiritual shareholder before it was launched, and held high the banner of boreo.
Therefore, the Goldfinch film has attracted wide attention as soon as the project is established. The media also regarded it as the Oscar seed film promoted by Warner in 2019. Look at this lineup, the actor of adult Theo and the actor of juvenile Boris are now well-deserved traffic in Hollywood, and Nicole and Banana sister joined, plus the director is John Crowley, who had Otti before. , the screenwriter is Oscar-winning screenwriter Peter Straun, and the cinematographer is Roger Deakins, who just won the Oscar for best cinematography. It can be said to be a star-studded and very reliable production team. However, after the screening of the film critics at the Toronto Film Festival, the long-awaited film suddenly flooded with bad reviews, and it went out all of a sudden. The box office was also appalling, much to the astonishment of critics and audiences alike. But the Goldfinch's rollover is not an accident.
As early as the beginning of the year, I saw someone say that nerdreactor revealed that the film's internal test screening only got 1.5 points, and the biggest problem was the editing of the film. However, the pre-release draft of Goldfinch used the film to change the narrative structure of the original as a gimmick. Combined with its withdrawal from the Venice Film Festival, I felt that the film might be cold at the time, but it turned out to be true.
The narrative of the entire film is really interlude and interlude, interspersed without any meaning and technical content. Because every time the time and space are changed, the childhood plot does not have any connection with the adult plot, hints, echoes or overlaps, or there is, but the director's level does not show the reason and logic for this kind of interspersed. He shattered a story that had to rely on time and space to promote the development of the plot into clueless pieces. What's more terrible is that every time the plot needs to be further advanced, the emotional tension between the characters will be brewing or before an important event is about to break out, the director, as if afraid to whet the audience's appetite, quickly transitions to give the tension to the scene. Dissolved, and then turned into a long, dull and meaningless plot. There are several plot climaxes and turning points in the original novel. The bombing of the museum, the abuse of Boris' father, the death of Larry in a car accident, the kiss goodbye by Theo and Boris, the shooting blockbuster in Amsterdam are all intense and dramatic highlights. However, the director made a news briefing account of these conflict points in the least salty and indifferent way, avoiding important points or even indifference. The director used a lot of indoor scenes and close-up scenes in the film with too many narrations of the male protagonist. This is a very lazy and perfunctory way. Some key plot points are even reluctant to give a shot. It all depends on the actors to explain the plot with hasty and pale dialogues instead of the due picture conflicts. This also makes it impossible for the audience to find emotional stimulation points during the entire viewing process, nor to find emotional resonance with the male protagonist. It's no surprise why viewers who haven't seen the original feel lethargic and uninterested. The director and editor can clearly and honestly follow the narrative sequence of the original work and smoothly cut out a film with ups and downs, which is both entertaining and thinking. However, he chose this way of refusing to speak properly, and made a complete story into a mindless, fragmented and loose video pasteboard. The expression of stream of consciousness is really overturned in this film.
Director John Crowley's two previous films, Brooklyn and Boy A, I have seen, are actually fairly well-received personal growth films. In particular, Boy A's plot development and narrative structure actually feel familiar to Goldfinch, and I believe this is why Warners chose him as the director. However, the pros and cons of John Crowley's style of photography are also very clear. He is very good at expressing some themes about people and social environment, and his style is also very subtle and soothing. However, such a movie can easily have the plot structure and rhythm of a TV series. Boy A is very much like a TV movie. The good reputation of his previous two films is largely due to Ronan and Garfield's superb interpretation skills and their perfect fit with the characters. In such a bland narrative, they are very full and credible and can interact with the audience. Empathetic performance. But once the plot level is richer, the relationship between the characters is more complicated, the conflicts are more intense, and the scene is bigger, the director can't control it a bit. Moreover, the choice of actors this time is also so unsatisfactory, which directly makes it difficult for the audience to enter the play.
To be honest, Ansel is a very lovely actor, and I have a good impression of him, but he is not that kind of talented actor. He needs to meet characters that fit his temperament very well in order to stand out. For example, the baby in Extreme Car Theft God is tailor-made for him. But most of the time he is not a perceptive and capable actor. He himself is too tall and strong, and his temperament is also a very sunny idol. However, the male protagonist of Goldfinch is a slender, melancholy and fragile drug addict who has PTSD sequelae, who pretends to be a successful person but lives in desperate anxiety and tension. In the book Boris says he still looks a lot like Harry Potter. However, this blond, tall, mighty, healthy-looking male protagonist with the anxiety and fear on his face as if he was acting out a little emotion really had no way of convincing me that he was Potter.
Although Ansel is very ambitious and hopes to prove that he can also play a strong actor in literary genre films through his performance in Goldfinch, his attempt this time was very unsuccessful. In expressing the guilt and pain of the male protagonist, even the young Theo actor Oakes Fegley's performance is more convincing than him (however, his appearance still does not match the description of the original book). The interesting thing is that Boris' adult actor Aneurin Barnard looks very similar to Harry Potter, but he calls Ansel's Theo is Potter, and Finn who plays the young Boris is a head taller than Oakes, even taller than the adult Boris, When it came to adult actors, Theo turned out to be a head taller than Boris. The sense of confusion brought about by the improper choice of roles also affected many audiences into the play.
In addition, the arrangement of some important roles has also seriously affected the feel and rhythm of the plot. The first is Nicole's positioning. Her role as Mrs. Barber in the original book is really not as important as in the play, and the relationship and emotional focus between Theo and the Barber family is actually Andy rather than her. In the film, however, Mrs. Barber has become an old-fashioned, heartfelt lover of Theo's mother-like image, but this adaptation is illogical. In fact, the atmosphere of the Barber family who adopted Theo was oppressive and suffocating, and they maintained their surface courtesy and concern for their own concerns. However, Mr. Barber is mentally ill and self-righteous compulsive. Mrs. Barber loves her unsatisfactory eldest son, and cares very little for Andy. This also paved the way for Andy's death. Elegant, generous, and tasteful Mrs. Barber, although decent and friendly, is actually cold and empty and realistic in nature, which also affects her daughter Kathy's attitude towards Theo, both of them and Theo maintain the surface because of Andy However, they each have their own selfish plans, which is why Theo is closely connected with the Barber family after Andy's death but resists. The extra drama of Mrs. Barber's mother's love also makes Theo's loneliness and pain after losing her mother's love unconvincing. And the casting of Hobby is confusing, not to say that black people can't play white roles. However, Donna Tate herself has repeatedly emphasized that Hobby is an elite old white man with a story in the fringe circle of New York high society, and has a very detailed description of his appearance, temperament and behavior, which goes against the author's original intention and forced to replace it with a black man The image is really a very pointless act of political correctness.
However, it is for the sake of political correctness, but what makes people puzzled is why the director is so taboo about the homosexuality plot that has been shown many times in the book. The homosexuals explicitly mentioned in it include Mr. Reeve who extorted Theo and Li Sasha and his Chinese waiter boy from the Amsterdam painting piracy team. Boris also called Hobby an old gay, and Hobby does have a relationship with Welty. Great suspicion. The male protagonist Theo also has a strong homosexual tendency. He used to be attached to Andy, and later to Boris. He even almost said "I love you" when he said goodbye to Boris, but the director used these gay elements. The biggest cuts were made, and even the kiss between Theo and Boris was handled very hastily. In the original book, Theo has an obvious psychological description that Boris is jealous of his girlfriend. However, all these delicate emotional scenes of homosexuality in the film have been deleted, and even the second male who plays a major role in the plot in the play. The role of Boris has also been greatly reduced, and the characters and plots related to him have also been greatly reduced. The director is also strenuously denying the same-sex orientation between Theo and Boris, and even modified the open ending of Theo and Boris at the end of the original book to become The so-called warm ending of Theo returning to Mrs. Barber's side is also a problem that the director has been criticized by readers and audiences.
Boris made a brief appearance in the Las Vegas chapter and parted ways with Theo. In the last half hour of the film of more than 200 minutes, it reappeared again. In the last less than half an hour, the plot is about to finish Boris confessing his fault to Theo, pulling Theo away from the engagement ceremony, going to Amsterdam to retrieve the Goldfinch painting, and fighting with the criminal group. After the murder, he fell into a coma in the hotel and repeatedly tried to commit suicide. Boris rescued him and planned to return the painting with his companions, and destroyed the international cultural relic smuggling team. In the end, Boris was in tears. Tell Theo a lot of big truths, and Theo will get rid of the guilt, anxiety, fear and grief that have been lingering for many years, and reconcile with himself and his destiny. All the plots have to be finished in such a cramped time, and there are several inexplicable plot flashbacks in the middle. It is conceivable how chaotic and top-heavy the rhythm of this film will be. So that at the end, the scene of the explosion in the museum reappeared again, and the mother finally appeared frontally, revealing why Theo had to hide the painting of the goldfinch privately, and when the death of his mother had caused him much pain, the film was completely lost. Aware of the infectious power of the sudden enlightenment of the truth, the audience also lost the last patience of the film in the long and chaotic narrative. As a viewer who has watched the original work, after watching the film, he still can't figure out what theme the director wants to express. Then for viewers who haven't read the original book and don't understand the plot outline, this viewing process will be even more tormenting.
I can feel that the director and editing have worked hard, but in the end they all gave up the treatment, and in the end they themselves forgot what the theme of this story was about, leaving only "" Wow, the male lead's life It's really miserable! See how I change the tricks to make him uncomfortable. "This looks very artistic but I don't know the so-called gesture. I feel sorry for the wonderful original work and the good Boreo.
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