SlateHere’s a conundrum: How is it that The Goldfinch the novel got stellar reviews (not to mention a Pulitzer Prize), and The Goldfinch the movie, despite being a remarkably faithful adaptation of the story, very much has not? Unfortunately, we’re not gonna be able to answer that right now. If anyone could solve the problem of adaptation once and for all, it would no doubt be worth more than the work of art at the center of this story, a 17th-century painting of a chained goldfinch by a Dutch master. What we are here to do is tell you exactly where the book and film diverge.
Most often, the answer is that the movie, even at two-and-a-half hours long, can’t fit in as much as does the 800-page novel, forcing director John Crowley and screenwriter Peter Straughan to pare down a bit on details, characters, and plot. Remember, we’re going through the whole movie and the whole book, so don’t say we didn’t warn you about spoilers.
Theo’s Mom
In both the book and the movie, the story begins, of course, when a boy named Theo (played as a tween by Oakes Fegley and as an adult by Ansel Elgort) steals The Goldfinch from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the chaotic few moments after a bombing kills his mother and ruptures his world. The main difference between the book version of Theo’s mom (Hailey Wist) and the movie version is how much better we get to know her and how much more time we get to spend with her in the book. In the movie, we never learn her first name (Audrey), and we don’t even see her face till the end. The book paints her as someone who was beloved by her son and doormen alike, which makes it all the more devastating when she dies, but in the movie, most of that is left up to our imaginations.
Toward the end of the movie, it’s treated as a bit of a revelation that The Goldfinch was Theo’s mom’s favorite painting, whereas it’s right there in the early parts of the book. We also find out that as a child, Theo’s mother was afraid of The Anatomy Lesson, the painting she goes to look at right before the bomb goes off and therefore the reason she and Theo aren’t together when the bombing happens.