‘The Goldfinch’ Trailer Will Immediately Pull At Your Heartstrings

Bookworms pay attention, because the trailer for your next favorite movie has just dropped. The trailer for The Goldfinch starring Ansel Elgort and Nicole Kidman is here, and the sweeping melancholic tale is sure to pull at your heartstrings. The new movie is based on the 2013 novel by Donna Tartt and it tells the life story of Theo (played by Elgort) after a childhood tragedy shapes his decisions forever. The official synopsis of the movie from Warner Brothers reads:

As a child, Theodore Decker survives a terrorist bombing at an art museum — an attack that kills his mother. From there, he tumbles through a series of adventures that finds him living in Las Vegas with his deadbeat father and, later, involved in art forgeries.

Kidman plays Mrs. Barbour, a kind and wealthy woman who comforts Theo in his time of grief, while Elgort plays Theo as a young adult who is haunted by tragedy and a Dutch painting of a goldfinch that she showed him right before she died. Those ghostly feelings run through the whole story, and they set the tone for the trailer from the start. It begins with Elgort's voiceover saying:

In Amsterdam, I dreamt I saw my mother again. Same beautiful, pale blue eyes. When I lost her, I lost sight of any landmark that might’ve led me someplace happier,

You can check out the trailer yourself below:

The movie has a high pedigree of filmmakers behind it. Director John Crowley was nominated for an Oscar for his work helming 2016's Brooklyn. Cinematographer Roger Deakens is a legend in his field, and he just won an Oscar for the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049. At CinemaCon this past year, Elgort said that the expertise of the people behind the camera was a big part in his decision to be a part of The Goldfinch. He said:

Well, I read the book and it is an epic story, really great. And I heard they were making a movie, John Crowley directing it and Roger Deakins, who had just won the Oscar for Blade Runner, and I knew they would be able to capture Donna Tartt’s tone, and that was so important.

With such a high caliber of talent behind it, it's likely that The Goldfinch will be an awards contender. But it's more than simple Oscar bait. Crowley talked to USA Today about the thought that went into the artistry of the film, saying:

We move around a lot more impressionistically to suggest that the man that you meet at the start of the story is not in a very good place. It’s a very interesting study in how an individual’s relationship to his own past and his sense of his past can shift.

The novel the movie is based on runs a hefty 760 pages, so it's no small feat to translate that story onto the screen. But, with such an artful storytelling style, the movie will likely convey all the story's complex emotions beautifully.

The Goldfinch will open in theaters September 12, 2019.