Gone Girl, 2014.
Directed by David Fincher.
Starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, David Clennon, Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit, Lisa Banes, Missi Pyle, and Emily Ratajkowski.
SYNOPSIS:
With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent.
The morning after arriving back home after a ten day holiday, I was in a supermarket picking up the usual essentials which had all expired or gone off whilst I was away. Whilst queuing at the checkout to pay I was confronted by a selection of paperbacks all on sale at half price and, faced with the task of finding a new book to read having recently finished one on the airplane journey just the day before, I picked up Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl which, having never heard of, was telling me on the cover it was the page-turner of the year. I bought it and read it in three days.
The novel was, to me, nothing more than airport fiction and I gave it away to a charity shop the next weekend. I didn’t hate the novel but it was disposable to the point of frustration; in other words, I ended up feeling I had wasted my time but for a mere £3 there was no real loss. A short while later, however, I read the first rumours online that David Fincher, a film maker I admire greatly, was lining up to make a movie of what, to me, was a forgettable, ridiculous, and entirely unsatisfying piece of the pulp. Just rumours, I kept believing.
Rumours turned into fact and I was forced into accepting the fact that one of my favourite film makers of the modern age was to make two films in a row based on worldwide best-selling novels – shifting focus from the hard edged thrillers which, combined with his uniquely dark sensibilities, made him a true master of his craft and one of the most significant visual storytellers to arrive on the American movie scene in a generation. Since 2008’s The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, however, Fincher’s work had appealled to my personal taste less and less; never in his ability to direct, but in the material he was now beginning to choose. I feared the worst for this, his tenth feature.
If Gone Girl has one thing going for it, it’s in the ability of David Fincher to turn even the most boring, overblown, bloated and farcically implausible screenplay into a film which – from a perspective of craftsmanship and understanding of camera placement, cutting, movement, and the innate ability of coaxing his audience down any dark alley he chooses – leaves not a doubt in anyone’s mind that he remains one of the great film makers working today. The same material in the hands of a mere jobber or director-for-hire might render Gone Girl intolerable.
You could, of course, say that about any film from your favourite film maker, but here Fincher has been handed a bag of coal and polished it to resemble diamantes if not quite actual diamonds. Everything which annoyed me about the novel is in Gillian Flynn’s screenplay; the implausible plot, the faux-snappy dialogue, the mystery which never captivates and only frustrates due to a distinct lack of any believability, and two main characters for whom I cared nothing. It doesn’t matter to me if I like anyone in a film or novel, but I have to care what happens to them, for better or worse.
As a thriller it doesn’t thrill and as a commentary on relationships and the falseness of who we fall in love with, it leaves me empty. The social media and television attention on the case is nothing new nor is it explored in a new ways (perhaps Fincher’s one failing in the film), and the screenplay lacks the quality Aaron Sorkin brought to the dialogue we got with The Social Network, where people were just as unlikable and just as untrustworthy. The difference being that film had a purpose in what it was saying about the generation, this film is just a cynical look at relationships for which I cannot identify with, nor do can I stretch my already wide imagination to accept anything in this film could happen. Both the leads, Nick (Ben Affleck) and the titular girl Amy (Rosamund Pike) have done bad things to each other and both have showed their true selves in the years in which the facade of the marriage has peeled away, but a far more interested story would ditch the ‘missing girl’ storyline, and focus on the marriage as it happens, not what happened in the past in flashback.
The film does allow Rosamund Pike a shot at an A-list leading lady role, which she completely owns and is fantastic in the part, but the role is unforgiving in its implausibility. Therein lies the omnipresnet uneasy juxtaposition in the film; so many great people in front and behind the camera, but all working with the material far bettered suited for a TV movie. For all his greatness, this is one film David Fincher cannot raise above the doldrums of mediocrity.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Rohan Morbey
Listen to the Flickering Myth Podcast review below:
Originally published October 4, 2014. Updated July 3, 2023.
