Director. David Fincher
Cast. Ben Affleck, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Neil Patrick Harris, Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry.
Rating. 70%
Gone Girl is the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel - a novel that spent more than 90 weeks in the New York Times Best Seller list. The film adaptation is comprehensively faithful to the book, which is no surprise as the film's director, David Fincher employed author Gillian Flynn to write the screenplay. The result is an impressive screenwriting debut.
Flynn ruthlessly edits the original material without significantly altering the story and retains a momentum despite a bifurcated narration. Essentially, the same story is told twice - first from the viewpoint of the husband and then from the wife's perspective. This unique format is completely compelling and leaves the audience guessing until the very final frame.
David Fincher delights in the sheer complexity of the narrative. The director applies the same forensic examination of a troubled relationship descending towards matrimonial hell in Gone Girl as he demonstrated in the clinical procedural serial-killer thrillers of Se7en and Zodiac. Whilst Gone Girl tells the story of a missing woman and whether her husband is responsible for her disappearance, the central mystery is not what happened to Amy, but rather, who she and Nick really are.
Ben Affleck is perfectly cast as the aforementioned husband, Nick Dunne, bringing just the right amount of jadedness to a once charismatic college professor, slowly deprived of his privacy, judged by the media and relieved of his dignity. Deliberately portraying a believable lack of authenticity onscreen is extremely difficult. It requires emotional aloofness and considered underplaying, and Ben Affleck nails its completely.
A couple of days after viewing Gone Girl I watched Dial M For Murder and it struck me that Rosamund Pike epitomised the archetypal 'Hitchcock blonde' in Gone Girl. The Hitchcock blonde is elegant, sophisticated and composed, but with an air of mystery about them. These icy-cold blondes - Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, Tippi Hedren, Kim Novak and Eva Marie Saint - exude sex appeal. In Gone Girl, Rosamund Pike radiates charisma into every frame. It is Pike's character who exhibits the most dynamic range. She's vulnerable and seductive, but calculating and duplicitous. She is pitiable, yet a monstrous principal character, not quite on the same spectrum as Lisbeth Salander, whose refusal to beg for the audience's sympathy is exactly what makes the character undeniably fascinating.
Director David Fincher is well-versed in the art of misdirection. Gone Girl is not the first time the director has employed an unreliable narrator and challenged the audience to question what's in front of them (Fight Club) or exposed the media's propensity for sensationalism and ability to amplify hysteria and paranoia (Zodiac). Indeed, when the director springs the first of several game-changing plot twists around the halfway point in the film, the pleasure stems less from shock value, and more in Fincher's willingness to pull us deeper into the labyrinth he has crafted.
In a toxic relationship where marital discord has evolved into malevolence, Fincher exposes the manipulative behavioural patterns that spouses can inadvertently lapse into over time. His assured direction vividly illustrates there really is a fine line between love and hate.
Comments
Post a Comment