REVIEWS
66 | Sight&Sound | November 2019
projects real charisma as the educated,
older, mysteriously charismatic gang leader
Levi, he too has a stock-character feel about him.
Without the grounding of persuasively
human characters, the film’s violence, whether
physical or emotional, is both more punishing
and more questionable. During the uncertain
middle third, escalating nastiness begins to
feel like a device to paper over vaguenesses in
the story, such as why Enitan’s real parents are
only intermittently involved in his life. If the
film’s brashness and tonal lurches can be oddly
exhilarating – as they were in Peter Mullan’s
thematically and tonally similar Neds (2010)
- its events constitute a patchwork of intense
sequences rather than a cohesive narrative.
In the face of inconsistent material,
performances are largely energetic and
intelligent – though there’s no getting past the
fact that Kate Beckinsale, an actress known for
cut-glass vowels and flawless beauty, was always
going to be distracting casting as Ingrid, the
embodiment of hardscrabble vulgarity. In a film
preoccupied by the meanings communicated
by human skin, there’s no avoiding the fact the
Beckinsale epidermis has been scrupulously
protected from visible signs of life experience.
Tilbury, Essex, 1967. Against a backdrop of
heightening racial tensions in the UK, thousands
of babies born to Nigerian immigrants are fostered
to white families while their parents are studying.
Enitan, whose parents are training to be lawyers,
is one of many children raised by the raw and
raucous Carpenter family. Bullied at school and
often the butt of Ingrid Carpenter’s cruelty, Enitan
grows up bright but troubled. An effort to return
him to family in Nigeria fails. Back in London, he is
suspended from school, rejects the intervention
of sympathetic teacher Ms Dapo and begins
hanging out with a violent skinhead gang. After
involvement in a vicious fight, Enitan attempts
suicide. He recovers, and is reunited with Ms Dapo,
now working to rehabilitate troubled youths. She
commits to helping him, and his Nigerian family
pay for his education. Enitan obtains a law degree.
The closing credits show director Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje, on whose life story the
film is based, receiving an honorary literature
degree from the University of London.
Produced by
Michael London
Janice Williams
François Ivernel
Andrew Levitas
Written by
Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Director of
Photography
Kit Fraser
Editor
Tariq Anwar
Production
Designer
Miren Marañon
Tejedor
Music
Ilan Eshkeri
Sound Recordist
Billy Bannister
Costume Designer
Bex Crofton-Atkins
©Farming the
Film Limited
Production
Companies
A Logical Pictures,
Metalwork Pictures
presentation, in
association with
Hanway Films,
of a Groundswell
Productions,
Montebello
Productions, AAA
Studios production
A film by Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Executive Producer
Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje
David Ostrander
Richard Abend
Frederic Fiore
Eric Tavitian
Cast
Damson Idris
Enitan, ‘Eni’
Kate Beckinsale
Ingrid Carpenter
Gugu Mbatha-Raw
Ms Dapo
John Dagleish
Levi
Jaime Winstone
Lynn
Ann Mitchell
Hilda
Genevieve Nnaji
Tolu
Adewale
Akinnuoye-Agbaje
Femi
Lee Ross
Jack Carpenter
Zephan Hanson
Amissah
Enitan as a baby
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
Lionsgate UK
Credits and Synopsis
Reviewed by Graham Fuller
Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist
Though Donna Tartt’s 784-page 2013 Pulitzer-
winner The Goldfinch caters to an elitist view of
great art’s transformative effect on the spectator
and the need for it to survive the ages, the novel
succeeds as a universal existential tale about
moral failure and romantic disappointment. It
has a sympathetic protagonist in Theo Decker,
a Manhattan youth whose traumatising by his
beloved mother Audrey’s death in a terrorist attack
makes him psychologically unable to return the
priceless painting he took from the museum
where Audrey was killed: ‘The Goldfinch’ by Dutch
artist Carel Fabritius, its subject significantly
chained. Theo’s ingesting of his abusive father
Larry’s exploitative nature also bears pathological
fruit: as an adult, he routinely sells to his clients the
forged vintage furniture innocently restored by
his partner Hobie. In Theo’s Ukrainian friend Boris
- also motherless and abused by his father – Tartt
meanwhile created one of recent literary fiction’s
great comic characters, the drug-trafficking
Artful Dodger to Theo’s corruptible Oliver.
The film’s director John Crowley (Brooklyn)
and screenwriter Peter Straughan (Wolf Hall)
evidently strove to capture the Dickensian
sprawl and eccentricity, descriptive beauty and
fatalistic atmosphere of Tartt’s novel. However,
they lost sight of the wood for the trees (if less
The Goldfinch
USA 2018
Director: John Crowley
Certificate 15 149m 16s
Present-day. Stranded in Amsterdam, Theo Decker
blames himself for his single mother Audrey’s death
in a terrorist bombing of Manhattan’s Metropolitan
Museum of Art eight years previously. He remembers
locking eyes with fellow adolescent Pippa in front of
Carel Fabritius’s 1654 painting ‘The Goldfinch’. Dying
from the blast, Pippa’s uncle Welty implores Theo to
rescue the painting, and gives him a ring. Keeping the
painting wrapped, Theo moves in with the wealthy
family of his school friend Andy Barbour, whose mother
Samantha gradually warms to him. He traces the ring
to the antique store Welty ran with furniture craftsman
Hobie, who is supervising Pippa’s recuperation.
Theo’s grasping father Larry and his trashy girlfriend
Xandra take him to live in Las Vegas, where new school
friend Boris introduces him to recreational drugs
and secretly steals the painting. Larry is killed.
Back in Manhattan, Theo becomes Hobie’s
business partner. He learns that Andy and his father
have drowned, and visits the grieving Samantha. He
dates Andy’s sister Kitsey. Con man Lucius Reeve
tries to blackmail Theo for taking ‘The Goldfinch’ and
selling Hobie’s restored furniture pieces as originals.
Pippa, who lives with her boyfriend in England, says
she misses Theo but can’t face living in Manhattan.
Theo again encounters Boris, who admits taking
the painting and losing it in a Miami drug deal. Theo
dumps the unfaithful Kitsey at their pre-wedding
party. In Amsterdam, he and Boris seize ‘The
Goldfinch’ from gangsters but lose it in a shootout.
Boris saves Theo from suicide and tells him that a
government SWAT team recovered the painting.
Produced by
Nina Jacobson
Brad Simpson
Screenplay
Peter Straughan
Based on the novel
by Donna Tartt
Director of
Photography
Roger Deakins
Editor
Kelley Dixon
Production Designer
K.K. Barrett
Music
Trevor Gureckis
Sound Mixer
Drew Kunin
Costumes
Designed by
Kasia Walicka
Maimone
©Warner Bros.
Entertainment Inc.
and Amazon Content
Services LLC
Production
Companies
A Warner Bros.
Pictures presentation
in association with
Amazon Studios
A Color Force
production
A John Crowley film
Executive Producers
Mari Jo Winkler-
Ioffreda
Kevin McCormick
Sue Kroll
Courtenay Valenti
Cast
Ansel Elgort
Theo Decker (adult)
Oakes Fegley
Theo Decker (young)
Aneurin Barnard
Boris (adult)
Finn Wolfhard
Boris (young)
Sarah Paulson
Xandra
Luke Wilson
Larry
Jeffrey Wright
Hobie
Ashleigh Cummings
Pippa (adult)
Nicole Kidman
Samantha Barbour
Hailey Wist
Audrey, Theo’s mother
Willa Fitzgerald
Kitsey Barbour (adult)
Ryan Foust
Andy Barbour (young)
Robert Joy
Welty
Denis O’Hare
Lucius Reeve
Dolby Digital
In Colour
[1.85:1]
Distributor
Warner Bros. Pictures
International (UK)
Grief encounter: Nicole Kidman, Ansel Elgort
Credits and Synopsis
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 9
