TimeOff Opener
110 Time Sept. 2–9, 2019
MOVIES
On the big screen, The
Goldfinch takes flight
By Sarah Begley
O
n a march day on new york ciTy’s Upper easT
Side, producers huddle on the narrow first floor
of an art gallery, studying their monitors and
surrounded by pictures of flora and fauna. Eagles
and herons adorn the walls, but the bird that serves as the focal
point of this big production is much daintier: small enough to
perch on a finger, yet still beautiful enough to start a sensation.
The bird, of course, is a goldfinch—or rather a painting of
one from the 17th century by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius.
That indelible image was the inspiration for Donna Tartt’s
Pulitzer Prize–winning 2013 novel, The Goldfinch, which
tracks the winding coming-of-age story of a teenage boy who
steals the painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in the aftermath of a bombing in which his mother is killed.
Here at the gallery, director John Crowley—best known for
helming the 2015 Oscar- nominated film Brooklyn—is shoot-
ing the final scene of the book’s much anticipated film adap-
tation. The real action is taking place upstairs, where Ansel
Elgort and Nicole Kidman are filming, but this characteristi-
cally cramped Manhattan gallery is too small to fit everyone
on one floor, so most of the crew watches from below, Kid-
man and Elgort visible in miniature on the monitors as they
shoot one take after another.
It’s a particularly frigid day, so Kidman and Elgort are both
bundled in parkas over their costumes when I meet them
downstairs after the shoot wraps. Elgort holds a plastic cup,
lid and straw with his hand pulled inside the sleeve of his
parka, such that the cup appears where his hand should be,
while Kidman is wearing a gray wig and prosthetics to look
older, as she’s quick to point out. Could it be the formula for
a second Oscar, after she donned a fake nose to play Virginia
Woolf in The Hours and went on to win Best Actress?
“No,” she says, “it’s just what’s authentic for the role.”
There’s a dramatic age difference for her character between
her first and last scenes; at first she looks radiant and steely,
but later she’s gone weathered from sorrow and the passage
of time. “When you reach the age I’m at, you can go either
way. It’s a fabulous place to be.”
It’s only a few days after the 90th Academy Awards, where
the two co-stars ran into each other. “I think it was the first
time he saw me without all this,” Kidman says, gesturing
to her fake neck. “I saw Ansel’s eyes sort of going, ‘Who is
this?’ ” Elgort has been working on modifying his appear-
ance as well: “I’ve been dieting for this movie, because ap-
parently I was too healthy- looking,” he explains. “They
cast me anyway. They believed that I could become un-
healthy, and I did!”
As restrained as their characters are in the film, the
two actors are playful with each other and ready to
laugh when the camera’s not rolling. When asked if he
might get typecast as a thief now—this is his first big
feature since starring in the car-heist
flick Baby Driver— Elgort says, “Sure.
It’s fun being a thief.”
“Thief of the heart,” Kidman says.Onscreen, the tOne is decidedly
more somber. The film toggles back
and forth between the story lines of the
adult Theo Decker (Elgort), who re-
mains haunted by his mother’s tragic
death and his guilt and paranoia over
having stolen the painting, even as a
grownup who’s become an art forger;
and the odyssey of the teenage Theo
(Oakes Fegley), who begins bouncing
from one adult guardian to another in
the wake of his mother’s death. He’s
taken in by Mrs. Barbour (Kidman),
the mother of a school friend. In Tartt’s
novel, she is described as “so cool and
blonde and monotone that sometimes
she seemed partially drained of blood.”
Kidman makes the character glacial
with flashes of warmth, an Upper East
Side mom with more layers than are at
first evident.
During his stay with the Barbours,
Theo is exposed to a more high- society
lifestyle, as well as a ravishing Ameri-
can art collection; Mrs. Barbour recog-
nizes a kinship with the young art lover,
and quickly takes a liking to him in her
under stated “bloodless” way. The role
has been expanded from its smaller
footprint in the book, perhaps to ac-
commodate Kidman’s star power, and
she holds up every scene she’s in like a
caryatid in a Greek ruin.
But after Theo’s hapless father (Luke
Wilson) resurfaces, along with a new
girlfriend (a wonderfully smarmy Sarah
Paulson, playing against type), taking
the boy on a misbegotten detour to the
Nevada desert, Theo begins fumbling
toward independence, namely through
his intimate friendship with an Eastern
European classmate, Boris (Stranger
Things’ Finn Wolfhard). Theo ultimately
lands back in the care of antiques dealer
James “Hobie” Hobart (Jeffrey Wright),
whose partner was also killed in the Met
explosion. Theo ends up becoming a
skilled forger of valuable furniture—all
while carrying a priceless stolen paint-
ing along with him on his adventures.
Eventually he finds his way back to
the Barbour family and its matriarch’s
encouragement.Since its
publication
in 2013, The
Goldfinch
has sold
over
3 million
copiesAuthor Tartt
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