‘The Goldfinch’ is overstuffed, overlong and utterly uninvolving

A circumspect, funereal pall hangs over The Goldfinch, John Crowley’s careful but lifeless adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. As attractively put-together and well-mannered as the aristocracy that forms the core of this sprawling story, Crowley’s earnest but ultimately hapless attempt to bring literature to the screen proves why these transmutations so often fall flat: What draws readers in on the page, what captivates their imaginations and haunts their dreams, can’t be reduced to putting characters through the paces of a plot, however cleverly constructed.

And be forewarned: There’s a lot of plot in The Goldfinch, which stars Ansel Elgort as Theo Decker, a young man struggling with the trauma of having survived a bombing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when he was 13, a crime that left his mother dead and Theo with a crippling case of emotional loss and survivor’s guilt.

As the film opens, Theo is in Amsterdam, ready to end his suffering in the most permanent way possible. What ensues is a retelling of how he got here: a mournful picaresque involving a wealthy adoptive family in New York; a stint in recession-era Las Vegas; an adolescent infatuation with a red-haired girl who was also affected by the bombing and the titular small painting. an unmistakable air of unexamined privilege wafts through The

Goldfinch, a mood that isn’t helped by the fact that the characters have names like Kitsey, Platt and Welty. Overstuffed, overlong and utterly uninvolving, this is a movie that feels as morbidly trapped as the poor little bird of its title. Rather than spread its wings and fly free, it stays frustratingly, eternally inert.