THE GOLDFINCH ***

Firstly, I haven't read Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize winning novel so I can't say just how good or how bad John Crowley's screen version is in comparison but purely as an epic piece of cinema with a multi-layered plot and a host of characters, (the book has been described as 'Dickensian'), this film is very good indeed. For anyone still unfamiliar with the story, it's about a boy who survives a bombing at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in which his mother is killed. The Goldfinch of the title is the painting they were looking at when the bomb went off.

The film covers a number of years. Two actors play the film's central character, Theo Decker; as a child he is played by the remarkably gifted Oakes Fegley and as an adult by Ansel Elgort. They are both superb, particularly young Fegley who gives an Oscar-worthy performance. After his mother's death he is initially taken in by the Barbour family in which the dominant figure is the mother, (a superb Nicole Kidman). This is at least until his up-to-now absent father, (Luke Wilson), and his mistress, (Sarah Paulson), drag him off to the very fringes of Las Vegas where his only friend is a young drug-taking, vodka-drinking Russian who might also be gay or at least bisexual. Then there is the 'alternate' story where he is also taken in by a not wholly legitimate antique dealer and furniture restorer, (Jeffrey Wright). I did say there was a lot of plot.

Much of the criticism levelled at the film is that Tartt's book was basically 'unfilmable' to begin with but if that was the case then let me say that screenwriter Peter Straughan has done a remarkable job of drawing all the plot strands together and in juggling the leaps back and forth in time. All the performances are excellent and Crowley shows great skill in handling the younger performers. Yes, it takes its time and yes, it does require a good deal of commitment from its audience but this is an adventure well worth taking particularly if, like me, you are unfamiliar with the book and can simply enjoy this marvellous film for what it is.