Nick Dunne returns home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find a smashed table and a missing wife. I can't really say much more than that, otherwise the twisting plot of Gone Girl, David Fincher's new thriller, would be completely given away. Suffice to say it involves the disappearance of a woman and the subsequent investigation, and the slow shift of suspicion falling onto her husband. What has happened? Is Nick guilty of murdering Amy? Who to root for, and which of the two versions of events to believe, is at the heart of this tale of distorted reality.
Nick is a reasonably dislikeable man. He's smug, he's boring, he's selfish. But he forms an ostensibly perfect couple with Amy, fellow journalist and inspiration for her parents' best-selling series of saccharine children's novels Amazing Amy. 'We're so cute,' Amy muses prophetically 'that I want to punch us in the face.' Well, after the two lose their jobs in the recession and Nick forces a move back to his small Southern hometown, that punching pretty much becomes a reality. The marriage disintegrates, Nick has an affair and Amy goes missing.
Gone Girl is an odd blend of genres. Whilst ostensibly a thriller, with psychological and emotional questions at the heart, elements of comedy creep in with increasing frequency. The result is that you feel like you are dancing around evil with a perverted grin. There is much satire also, about the nature of celebrity and the role of the press and all that. Thankfully, this never becomes too obvious, avoiding the easy clichés. It also seems as if Gone Girl will turn into a standard police procedural, but this element slowly fizzles out. What you are left with is an idiosyncratic style that knocks the viewer off balance. ‘What did we just watch?’ is, I suspect, a common reaction.
Gone Girl has been adapted from a best-selling book by the author herself, and the writing is undeniably tight. However, it should be pointed out that what really brings the words to a four star production is the acting. At one point mocked and maligned more than anyone on earth, Ben Affleck is obviously well-suited to playing Nick, ‘the most hated man in America’. He captures the banal, reasonably flawed everyman of Nick Dunne, treading the line between sympathetic guy-next-door and pathetic adulterer. Carrie Coon is sturdy as his feisty twin; Kim Dickens is spirited as the Fargo-esque cop; Tyler Perry is greasily amusing as Tanner Bolt, the celebrity wife-killer defence lawyer; and Neil Patrick Harris is superbly comic as the excessively neat weirdo ex-boyfriend of Amy.
Gone Girl is an odd blend of genres. Whilst ostensibly a thriller, with psychological and emotional questions at the heart, elements of comedy creep in with increasing frequency. The result is that you feel like you are dancing around evil with a perverted grin. There is much satire also, about the nature of celebrity and the role of the press and all that. Thankfully, this never becomes too obvious, avoiding the easy clichés. It also seems as if Gone Girl will turn into a standard police procedural, but this element slowly fizzles out. What you are left with is an idiosyncratic style that knocks the viewer off balance. ‘What did we just watch?’ is, I suspect, a common reaction.
Gone Girl has been adapted from a best-selling book by the author herself, and the writing is undeniably tight. However, it should be pointed out that what really brings the words to a four star production is the acting. At one point mocked and maligned more than anyone on earth, Ben Affleck is obviously well-suited to playing Nick, ‘the most hated man in America’. He captures the banal, reasonably flawed everyman of Nick Dunne, treading the line between sympathetic guy-next-door and pathetic adulterer. Carrie Coon is sturdy as his feisty twin; Kim Dickens is spirited as the Fargo-esque cop; Tyler Perry is greasily amusing as Tanner Bolt, the celebrity wife-killer defence lawyer; and Neil Patrick Harris is superbly comic as the excessively neat weirdo ex-boyfriend of Amy.
However, Rosamund Pike is in a league of her own. Her cool, focused face is that of the archetypal sociopathic femme fatale. She can switch from one person to another, from good to evil, so powerfully yet with the minimal of physical changes. Watching her makes you wonder why she hasn't been in more since Die Another Day, but perhaps now she will be – a true slow-burner.
Gone Girl is further enhanced by its visual style. All due praise should be heaped on those who had a hand in the filmography. Capturing the precarious world of this McMansion suburbia is achieved through an incredibly measured, precise view of it all. It is like watching the surface of a pond on a windless day. Clear, bright lighting bathes the clean counters, large homes, spotless SUVs. The still feel that is evoked gives the creepy feel of the small town and happy couple whose superficial perfection belies serious problems. It also mirrors Amy’s icy plotting.
Gone Girl seems to be asking what is behind suburban charm and superficial perfection, something which is not a novel concept. But that reading is deceptively reductive. On a higher level, Gone Girl asks us about what we really understand of the people we think we know, and when in life does illusion take over? Gone Girl should be viewed again and again to peel back the layers of artifice and really get to the bottom of its themes. Fittingly, it feels almost like you haven't really understood what it's about, probably because you're being lied to all the time. There has been a lot of talk about its true meaning, and it seems as if the trickery of Amy and, to a lesser extent, Nick is also evidenced by writer Gillian Flynn and director David Fincher. I would not say that Gone Girl is really any kind of a social satire. So what is it really? Just call it a thriller and enjoy the experience.
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