Gone Girl review
(Picture from Regency Enterprises)
This screen adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel opens with a peculiar shot of the back of Rosamund Pike’s head, resting on the Batsuit-prepped chest of Ben Affleck. His character Nick Dunne narrates: “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?”, thoughts that initially seem innocent enough. But what director David Fincher is already implimenting is the notion that no matter how close two people may be, they can never really know what the other half is thinking. Unless you "crack open" their skull and "unspool" their brain.
On such a set-up it is only natural to assume Nick is responsible when his wife Amy goes unaccountably missing. That at least is the conclusion drawn by the public, media and certain members of the police. Everything points towards Nick, including Amy’s diary, which coherently details the couple’s journey from the cunnilingus-filled happy days of their relationship to “this man of mine might kill me. This man may truly kill me”. It’s almost too incriminating for Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens), who suspects everything is not as it seems.
One of Gone Girl’s many accomplishments is that even the audience start to doubt Nick. For a man who’s just lost his wife he comes across unnervingly laid back and generally unmoved by the whole scenario. He hides his phone and keeps secrets from us as well as the characters in the film – an unreliable protagonist indeed. But what is strange is the way the narrative splits into two acts, and almost two entirely different films. The first half being a relatively simple detective thriller – albeit grippingly white knuckle inducing – to a more complex, psychological extravaganza that causes the audience’s allegiance to shift.
That is what is so unique about Flynn’s novel and subsequently allows Affleck and Pike to continuously add layers to their characters. They tremendously embrace the narrative jump and evolve into a far tastier product than the one proposed by the first half of the film. That sort of character development is synonymous with David Fincher’s direction, particularly in Fight Club and Seven. So it’s unsurprising that, just like them, Gone Girl deals with the horrific wrath of a psychopath.
When the twist does arrive it turns into full-blown Basic Instinct. The politeness of a slowly haunting mystery is replaced by nightmarish gore and lifeless facial expressions, akin to Norman Bates’s deathly stare at the end of Psycho.
Amy’s diary and her narration are unreliable, but more disturbingly draw attention to preconceived ideas of women and their portrayal in cases of domestic abuse and rape. Amy’s character represents a type of female empowerment that is actually not for the betterment of feminism.
Shot similarly to Fincher’s harrowingly bleak A Social Network, Gone Girl’s construction is as meticulous as its female protagonist. With its themes of gender dependencies, misogyny and psychoticism, this thriller is bound to be one of the most talked about films of the year.
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