Review: Gone Girl
Image is everything. Perception becomes reality. What do you think of a husband who gazes down on his lovely wife and wonders, "What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?" Do you think him romantic? Reflective? Regretful? What if he wants to crack open his wife's skull to discover those answers? Such a violent description. What do you think of him then?
The man is Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and he has come home to find his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) gone. There are signs of a struggle in the living room and blood splatter in the kitchen. "Should I be concerned?" he asks Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and Officer Jim Gilpin (Patrick Fugit), who are baffled by his remove and lack of knowledge of his wife's daily life. "Are you sure you're married?" Gilpin quips.
Image is everything. Perception becomes reality. Amy knows a thing or two about maintaining illusions. Her life has been the basis for Amazing Amy, the heroine of a bestselling series of books written by her parents. Amazing Amy is the daughter they wanted their own daughter to be, and Amy plays the part for the public and the media. Meeting Nick, a writer who charms her with his boyish Midwestern ways, she finds a better part: loving wife. As she recounts in her diary, "I forged the man of my dreams. We were the happiest couple we knew."
More diary entries present scenes from their marriage: at first rosy and idyllic, then spiked with a series of disappointments and ruptures of unspoken promises. The recession has made Nick lazy and unmotivated; he seems content to live off Amy's trust fund. Moving back to his hometown of Missouri to care for his ailing mother has left Amy feeling abandoned and unsure of her marriage ("I feel like I could disappear"). She doesn't want to be "that person" - the wife who nags and demeans - but she can't deny that Nick has turned into someone who's not above hurting his wife. As she makes clear in her last entry, "This man of mine may kill me."
Screenwriter Gillian Flynn conducts a ruthless streamlining of her novel, retaining most of it whilst making smart choices about what to jettison or repurpose. Those familiar with her thriller will not be disappointed and those coming in blind are in for quite a ride. The film makes salient points on privilege, gender politics, rape culture, misogyny, and many other heady topics - all of which are prime fodder for post-viewing debate. Director David Fincher, working in concert with the pulsating palpitations of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's score, crafts a spellbinding and superlative film that serves as macabre marital comedy, prismatic procedural and stinging satire of our image-obsessed society.
Fincher's meticulous compositions show Nick as a man trapped but we never know what to make of him: is he victim or victimiser? He's certainly under siege from the media's parasitic glare, every offhand gesture or throwaway remark scrutinised and magnified for public consumption. "He's being a good guy so everyone can see him being a good guy," notes Gilpin, who's already pegged him as a murderer. Add to that Nick's smug smirk next to Amy's missing photo and his dispassionate plea at the initial press conference and he's all but condemned in everyone's eyes. Affleck is terrific, weaselly yet sympathetic, exasperated by the media's manipulations yet savvy enough to use it to his own advantage.
Amy is the more polarising figure: is she victim or victimiser? You could argue both sides, and even hold her as the prime example of the film's misogynistic treatment of women. There should be no argument, however, on how magnificent Pike is. Her Amy is watchful, haughty, scornful of women's self-abuse - how we remake ourselves to be the women we think men and society want us to be - and yet its strongest perpetrator. Most of all, Amy is possessed of a voracious will to survive. It is no small exaggeration to compare her to the Mother alien in the Alien film series, so destructive and devouring is that survival instinct.
Gone Girl
Directed by: David Fincher
Written by: Gillian Flynn; adapted from her novel
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, Carrie Coon, Tyler Perry, Neil Patrick Harris, Scoot McNairy
