Photo credit: Regency Enterprises
Written by Sommer Rusinski
The only downside to this film? The tickets don’t include therapy.
Gone Girl is a sharp, satirical take on contemporary marriage and the boredom, lying, and unfulfillment that comes with a trust funded life in the suburbs. Adapted for the screen by author Gillian Flynn, the film stays true to her best-selling novel of the same name.
Gone Girl tells the story of missing woman Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), whose husband has become the prime suspect in her assumed murder. Told in real time and peppered with narrated flashbacks from Amy’s diary, the story gets richer and more complex with every turn, whiplashing the audience with a high stakes he-said, she-said. We don’t know who to believe until a MONSTER plot twist comes at about halfway through and puts everything into perspective. But even after we have all the information, we’re still hooked. The pace remains fast and tensions continue to ratchet up until the last haunting frame of the film.
The movie opens with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck, Argo) on the morning of his wife’s all-too convenient disappearance. This character is tricky but Affleck plays him beautifully; always teetering on the edge of sociopathy and never letting on all that he knows. It is this detachment and dispassion that fuels the media circus surrounding the vanishing and even causes his twin sister Margo, the one who loves him the most, to have her doubts. Brilliantly played by Carrie Coon in her first big-screen role, Margo is the voice of reason in chaos. She’s the audience; always asking the tough questions and always near the action with ears perked and eyes wide.
But the real star of this film is Rosamund Pike. Amy Dunne is not her first role, but it is her first lead and one that will solidify her spot as a star from here on out. Amy is a cold, clever, and magnetic beauty. But most importantly, she is a skilled victim. Her eyes are clear and direct but give away nothing without her go-ahead. Her words are careful and exact and she has everyone, including us, eating out of the palm of her hand. Even from the beginning of the relationship, with anniversary scavenger hunts and powdered sugar kisses, something is off about Amy. She is a ghost of a woman and even when she’s not in a scene, her presence is suffocating.
Gone Girl is full, unapologetic Fincher. Straight off his less-than-stellar American remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher knocks this thing out of the park. With all the humor and absurdity of Fight Club and narrative fragmentation of Se7en, Gone Girl is his masterpiece.
Fincher teamed up with DP Jeff Cronenweth for the fourth time for this movie (Fight Club, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), and it is clear that these two geniuses have developed one hell of a shorthand. They are in lockstep with one another, especially since principal photography for this 150-minute film only lasted about 5 weeks. The movie is dark but crisp, murky but well lit; a perfect complement to the taut narrative.
Gone Girl is incredibly entertaining, and left my friends and I sitting in the theater until after the credits rolled, slowly unflaring our nostrils and picking our chins up off the floor.
