the Goldfinch
Brooklyn director John Crowley on his latest literary epic…
Nicole Kidman and Ansel Elgort head up a classy, awards-baiting adap.
After the enormous success of Brooklyn, which earned six times its production budget at the box office and landed three Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Irish director John Crowley has chosen a prestige adaptation of Donna Tartt’s celebrated, Pulitzer-winning novel, The Goldfinch, as his follow-up.
“It’s not so much that I was looking for a specific kind of film to direct, and for that to tick all the boxes,” Crowley tells Teasers. “It was just simply that I loved the material so much.” Crowley had enjoyed the novel before the project came his way, captivated by the “heartrending” predicament of the central character, Theo, played in the film’s two timelines by Oakes Fegley (Pete’s Dragon) and Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver).
Avoiding spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read Tartt’s 880-page tome, that predicament sees Theo’s mum killed in a shocking incident at an art gallery. He’s then adopted into the family of wealthy socialite Samantha (Nicole Kidman), and the picaresque story of his young life involves longdistance moves, dubious parental figures and art forgery.
The older and younger Theo were cast independently, not as a pair. “And we were lucky enough – and it was luck – that both of the actors that we loved creatively were able to be made to look quite alike,” says Crowley. The two were deliberately kept apart during the shoot because “we’re not the same person at different points of our life… I didn’t think it would help either actor’s head”.
And Nicole Kidman, continuing a white-hot run, provides connective tissue across the timelines. “She was vital, because she’s phenomenal, and was able to express both sides of that part, which are a very different distinction,” Crowley adds. “In the first section, there’s a very fragile woman who is trying to reach out and communicate with this child, and doesn’t quite know how to do it. In the second part, she’s all emotion. You need an actor who’s confident with those two zones.”
The decision to split the novel’s linear narrative came from screenwriter Peter Straughan. “Unless you’re going to do a 10-hour miniseries of it, the best way to do it was to focus on the two most dramatic parts of this young man’s life, and move between the two,” says the director. But despite the literary heritage, the film eludes easy classification. “I think that’s also what I loved about it,” says Crowley. “It’s not a genre piece. On one level, as a piece of fiction, it reads like a Victorian coming-of-age story. But there’s this slight edge of threat circling it, always, and a quality of menace. The younger section in Vegas is like an unhinged coming-of-age story.
I think the mix of it is really rich.”
ETA | 27 SEPTEMBER / THE GOLDFINCH OPENS THIS AUTUMN.