The Goldfinch

If a movie deserves to be nearly three hours long, it would be this one. And somehow three hours still doesn’t feel like enough.

The Goldfinch follows its characters across years and continents, and it does so with a patience that I really appreciated. You get to watch people grow up, drift apart, make mistakes and carry things with them they can never quite put down again.

The cast is stacked. Nicole Kidman and Sarah Paulson are fantastic, but the film honestly doesn’t need big names to hold itself up. The emotional storytelling and character development are already strong enough on their own.

There is a quiet sadness running through almost every scene, even in moments that should feel happy.
I can definitely see why some people think the story would work better as a book. There is so much happening that the movie occasionally feels like it’s racing to fit everything in. Still, it made me even more excited to finally pick up the novel, which has been sitting on my reading list for far too long.
Maybe that’s the highest compliment I can give an adaptation: it left me wanting more of the story, not less.