MOVIE REVIEW: ‘The Goldfinch’ Goes Where Many Adaptations Before Have Gone and Fails

Hello, long-dead, idealized mom.

There’s an art to adaptation, but adaptations aren’t always art. Condensing, compressing, and pruning plots and subplots, characters and backstories, dialogue and exposition has to be balanced against the inherent limitations of the new medium (from novel to film, for example). It can be a daunting, nearly impossible challenge for any filmmaker, especially when the adaptation in question involves a…