Adult Theo (Baby Driver’s Ansel Elgort) doesn’t make his debut until the second act of the movie’s runtime, allowing the audience to truly understand who he was as a young man at the time of his mother’s death.
As John Crowley explained to me in the above video, he approached The Goldfinch’s nonlinear storytelling first from the writing perspective.
But while the movie gives the adult version its full attention after wrapping up his childhood story, The Goldfinch continues to tell both stories until its very last frame.
Peter Straughan wrote the screenplay, and needed to be specific about how each timeline was used in the upcoming drama.