“Gone Girl” (2014)
The Best of David Fincher — Vol 4.
Wow. The autumn of 2014. I remember it so well!
I’m jesting obviously but re-reading my original “instant reaction” review below I do remember immediately buying a cheap paperback copy of the book, reading it and loving it in a couple of days before giving my copy to a young lady who worked in my local chip shop and no, her name wasn’t Elvis.
I originally declared this to be a masterpiece in its future appraisal and although it sits between Ben-Hur (1959) and Wild Strawberries (1957) in the www.imdb.com 250 films of all time, Gone Girl still resides at a lowly 184th position, and ridiculously two places higher than the Wes Anderson directed The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Hardly the masterpiece I proclaimed it to be back in that heady Autumnal England of 2014!
Here is that “instant reaction” piece or 22 years in the cinematic career of director David Fincher or indeed, both. I hope you enjoy.
“All I’m trying to do is be nice to the people who are volunteering in finding Amy”.
I am writing this precisely one hour after leaving the cinema on 3rd October 2014 and to badly paraphrase John Doe in Se7en “David Fincher has gone and done it again” because two thirds through his latest masterpiece (and it is just that) I will also badly paraphrase The Narrator in Fight Club because the majority of the audience and myself included thought “holy shit!”. We had indeed “just lost cabin pressure”.
Again, in a David Fincher film.
I hadn’t read the book of the same name by Gillian Flynn (Gillian also wrote the screenplay for the film) by the time I watched this film and despite the “clues” I wasn’t expecting the about turn in the film but it works, as does the hearty amount of comedy, scathing criticism, the spotlight it shines on the ghouls in Public Relations and the soap opera style media that shames and blights our lives today. It is a fantastic film with some majestic performances from some of the lesser known stars of the piece and to mix my film metaphors one last time, it’s an hour after seeing this for the first time and I desperately want to be sat in an all night diner with Alabama Worley eating pie and dissecting the film all over again. But alas I’m not! Anyway, spoiler free as ever, here’s my take on David Fincher’s latest masterpiece:
The film opens with the first of two narrators and an extreme close up on “Amy Dunne” (Rosamund Pike) as her husband “Nick Dunne” (Ben Affleck) narrates how he’d like to morbidly and gruesomely murder his wife before a quick cut takes us to the third of our main characters and one of the film’s many star performers. “Margo Dunne” is Nick’s devoted twin sister and business partner and Carrie Coon is phenomenal in her first major cinematic role. Nick and Margo are incredibly close and utterly protective of each other and their bond shines through in their early scenes together in the bar they jointly own and run. Their dynamic is a playful one of sibling love but early on (and with numerous extreme close ups of the board games they play in the bar) it seems Margo is the happier and more content of the two. Nick appears distracted and on edge, preoccupied and lost in his own thoughts and Affleck, as good as he is, doesn’t shine quite as brightly as his female co-stars.
The second narrator is Amy who, via her handwritten notebooks, both narrates the continuing story and provides the flashbacks to 2005 and her first encounter with Nick. Subsequent journal entries over the next five years lead to continuous life flashbacks as we discover a happy, oversexed and joyous couple embarking on romance, life, work, engagement and eventually through to marriage. As the audience we only see Amy in the flashbacks but Rosamund Pike’s performance is outstanding as, like her husband, she is also a magazine writer. Her parents are also writers themselves and the creators of the fictional “Amazing Amy” novels however as she admits herself she is always “one step behind” her fictional namesake which comes to a crashing realisation early on when her fictional character is getting married and prior to a launch of her parents latest novel she proclaims, via the medium of her journals and narration “Amazing Fucking Amy is getting Fucking Married”.
The tone is sombre and filled with regret and although she and Nick would eventually tie the knot in real life it’s clear that Amy is anything but happy. Famous from a young age, she is a trust fund girl with a somewhat lavish lifestyle but is clearly driven by her overbearing parents “Marybeth Elliot” (Lisa Banes) and “Rand Elliot” (David Clennon). All of this early narrative is played out through the prism of numerous flashbacks and cast against a black shadow.
Amy is now missing and Nick is very much the prime suspect.
In support of these main characters are further wonderful performances from Tyler Perry as Nick’s meticulous and calculating lawyer “Tanner Bolt”, Patrick Fugit as the skin crawling, nodding dog and downright creepy “Officer Jim Gilpin” (it’s a great performance despite my description and no doubt damning him with faint praise!) and similarly Missi Pyle as “Ellen Abbott” portrays a trashy Cable TV Host skin crawlingly well! The film constantly portrays the search for Amy in a modern day media circus style, warts and all, and Ellen Abbott provides the warts and the trash in spades. Neil Patrick Harris is superb as Amy’s old flame “Desi Collings” but the film’s other stand out performance comes from Kim Dickens as “Detective Rhonda Boney”. Boney is thorough, straight and unwilling to let the case drift regardless of the media circus that surrounds it. The camera often focuses directly on her eyes (or so it seems) and I certainly saw the film through both her performance and through her meticulous and exacting looks and touches as she primarily pieced the puzzle together.
To fully appraise David Fincher’s behind the scenes team I need to re-watch this again and of course, being the geek I am, I will be. However, Jeff Cronenweth returns for his fourth collaboration with the Director as Cinematographer and immediate kudos should be paid to Kirk Baxter’s editing as at times, in line with several of Fincher’s best films, the editing is frenetic. The blending of present time and flashback narratives is also mighty impressive from Baxter, also in his fourth collaboration with Fincher. Trent Reznor and partner Atticus Ross also return to collaborate with the Director on the film’s haunting musical soundtrack which often felt as though it subliminally accompanied the film without ever being overbearing but again, a re-watch is needed to fully appraise this too.
As an immediate reaction and written as it is just a couple of hours after seeing this for the first time I can safely vouch for the fact that this is going to grow and grow into a hit for the Director, co-stars and particularly Rosamund Pike. Hers is a stellar performance that spoilers won’t allow for full appraisal but along with Kim Dickens thoughtful Detective role and Carrie Coon’s sisterly role to Affleck’s portrayal of Nick, all three female stars deserve immense credit for their individualistic and often tough portrayals. Amy wants to be “cool” and desires what she can’t have and will do anything to mould that something into the image she desires. In so doing, the story shines a bright light on marriage, fidelity, loss and the animalistic media of the 21st Century hungry for a story but without the need of facts, preferring ratings and gloss over the real lives they shabbily interpret.
Much like Fight Club, David Fincher has taken a somewhat aggressive and scathing source material and twisted it further through his cinematic lens and this maybe yet another bona fide classic in the months and years ahead.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 100 blog articles (with 300+ individual film reviews) within my archives from which to choose:
