Gone Girl review

DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT 'TIL IT'S GONE

Rating: 9 out of 10

Remember that exciting feeling you have when you exit the theater and cannot wait to talk about the film extensively with just about anyone? Gone Girl is that fiery piece of accomplishment that leads to strong opinions and sometimes starts arguments at a dinner party. David Fincher’s wickedly dark cinematic adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s bestselling novel is what movies used to be. It is what movies should always give: Something to talk about.

This is the kind of stir Martin Scorsese caused with The Wolf of Wall Street last year and Christopher Nolan with Inception. I haven’t read the book and I’m glad I didn’t. Not knowing where the plot is heading is one of its pleasures. It stops being a movie midway and becomes a razor blade cutting through the institution of marriage. This is when it unleashes a plot point usually stacked at the end of the running time, boringly labeled as the ‘twist’.

This is also one of those films that are impossibly difficult to review without giving away the crucial plot elements (now known as ‘spoilers’ in the scribal world), which form your decisive response to the film. Adapted for the screen by the author herself, Gone Girl is right up Fincher’s dodgy sugar-stormed alley. This murder mystery is about the disappearance of Amy Dunne (Pike) and her husband, Nick (Affleck), becomes the prime suspect.

The film opens with Nick wondering what lies in a woman’s head. To be specific, he wonders if he could crack open his wife’s skull. Not only does this creepily set the plot in motion, it also recalls one of Fincher’s own past works where we wonder what’s in the box.

 I’ve never been an admirer of Ben Affleck’s work, in front of, or behind the camera. He’s probably the most successful one-note actor in Hollywood today. Fincher chose to cast him after seeing his smile and you can see why. The film undoubtedly belongs to Rosamund Pike, who gives a diabolically delicious performance. She has performed competently before in Pride and Prejudice (2005), An Education (2009) and The World’s End (2013). I recently saw her in the oddly delightful What We Did On Our Holiday, where her marriage with David Tennant is on the rocks, but nothing prepared me for this. It will surely earn her a Best Actress nomination at the Oscars and earmark her career.

(Spoilers ahead)

There are two kinds of movies: ones that cheat and ones that manipulate the viewer. You can’t show us something and then claim it wasn’t true. Unless, the reason for it is contained within the story or the character. I have strong disdain for cheating but can go easy on manipulation, if it’s done well. Then there are films that cheat so well, they almost make you feel like you wanted to be duped. In the hands of a hack, it's fraud. In the hands of a magician, it's a trick. Not many films live to tell the tale but The Sixth Sense (1999), Memento (2000) and The Usual Suspects (1995) have cleverly pulled it off. Fincher has also made use of the unreliable narrator in Fight Club (1999) before, which never quite worked for me but here it does.

Christopher Nolan spoke of the femme fatale in a film noir as the neurosis of the protagonist, how little he knows about the woman he’s fallen in love with. I would strongly urge you to read Flynn’s comment on the idea of the “Cool Girl” after you have the seen the film. Multiple times. It is something all men suffer from today. It is an extension of what femme fatales used to be in the noirs of the 1930s and 40s, or the Hitchcock blonde from the 50s and 60s. “Amazing Amy” is not just a Hitchcock blonde or a femme fatale. I’m almost frightened to write what she truly is. Her and Gene Tierney's character from Leave Her to Heaven (1945) should be best friends. Vincent Price and Neil Patrick Harris' characters too while we're at it, although Harris doesn't suffer the same fate. I wonder the impression that film would have left on Gillian Flynn and how much it influenced her while writing the book.

Furthermore, this would be exactly the kind of film Alfred Hitchcock would have made today, without the censor limitations. The wrong man accused of a crime, the blonde in distress, the double lives, the charming sociopath – it’s all there. Not to mention a revelation resembling Vertigo (1958), including the hair colour. This is one of the cases where Hitchcock succeeded with the unreliable character because the truth was hidden, never shown till it was. He admitted his failure of unreliable narration in Stage Fright (1950).

(End of spoilers)

The ensemble cast is an assortment of skilful actors. Kim Dickens and Patrick Fugit are the cops on the case. Carrie Coon plays Nick’s twin sister and forms the heart and the moral compass. Neil Patrick Harris plays Amy’s ex-boyfriend Desi Collings who has more part to play than imagined. The surprising scene-stealer is Tyler Perry who plays the lawyer with the funniest lines, especially one where he pronounces an honest judgment on the couple at hand.

David Fincher is the modern master of the uncomfortable. The film has the consistent technical prowess of his works thanks to his veteran eyes and ears. That stunningly icy sheen his films adorn, especially his three recent efforts photographed by Jeff Cronenweth and cut by editor Kirk Baxter. The music by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross completes a haunting musical trilogy of sorts with its sounds capturing the emptiness of the zeitgeist. The subtle brooding of ‘Still Gone’ is bewitching, while the crescendo of ‘Consummation’ heightens the effect of the most shocking scene in the film. The tone of the film is meticulously crafted and juggled through the visual and aural language of film.

Gone Girl may not be the best film in Fincher’s resumé, which boasts superlative films like The Social Network (2010), Seven (1995) and Zodiac (2007). For me, it is perhaps the most entertaining film he has made (which says a lot about how entertainment is perceived). This 2 ½ hour-long tense and unsettling drama is going to be talked about for years to come; it is simply the best feel-bad film of 2014.