David Fincher has always seemed like a director’s director. Even if the script can’t be turned into something great every Fincher project emerges as something distinct and undeniably his own at times wildly above the sources he’s working with. A talky screenplay about the invention of Facebook? A soapy and overwrought take on Washington politics? The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo? A cynic might suggest there is a certain hubris at play in his selection of source inspiration a sense of Fincher working in service of Fincher above the material at hand.
Which brings us to Gone Girl. The director’s 10th feature film it’s also his 10th working from adapted material or scripts. This time around Fincher sources his material from Gillian Flynn’s 2012 smash novel of the same name with Flynn on board as screenwriter. To tread lightly and not reveal more than necessary the film follows the moody hunk Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) who returns home on his anniversary to discover his wife missing and he himself left as the prime suspect. We quickly learn the backstory of the titular gone girl Amy (Rosamund Pike) an elite and stiff-lipped New Yorker who emerges as icy judgmental and not particularly friendly especially since the couple’s relocation to Missouri. Through flashbacks however Nick’s own unsavoury side percolates developing into what quickly seems a race to the bottom each revealed character trait an additional stone.
And race it does. It feels odd calling a two-and-a-half-hour film taut but it’s only natural considering we’re talking about the same director who turned The Social Network — essentially two hours of meetings — into a riveting narrative; and that time around he wasn’t even working with the premise of uxoricide. At times the editing and pacing are so swift the film feels like it’s gasping for breath while the images themselves can seem like they’re bottoming out constantly fading to black in a heartbeat before the occasional languid deep intake. These moments never last long however with the film constantly propelled forward by its capital ‘P’ Plot of which there is plenty. Some parts good some parts bad some parts funny (hilarious even) some parts nasty.
And it’s worth noting just how mean-spirited the entire affair feels. Since the film’s debut at the New York Film Festival last week it’s been greeted with considerable consternation and claims of misogyny and it’s easy to understand why. From the film’s first image of Affleck’s hand caressing Pike’s blond hair coupled with a voice-over espousing his internal desire to “smash in her skull” and “unspool her brains” hate and resentment feel as if they’re coursing through the narrative’s veins. While there are deep problems that emerge — ones that would require major spoilers in order to adequately parse — to dismiss the film as unequivocally woman-hating or reducing it to a “war of the sexes” feels simplistic. Even if it were any ultimate victory for one side over the other would surely be a pyrrhic one.
More broadly the target for Flynn and Fincher seems to be the suffocation of domesticity with its critique of the institution of marriage often spilling over into a flat takedown of the media circus. While the novel may have been warmly received moments such as these reveal the script’s slipshod tendencies that occasionally peak through Fincher’s assured sheen which is so immaculate that one feels inclined to forgive occasional hamfistedness as especially thick bits of pulp. Indeed one can only imagine how schlocky the film might have been in the hands of a lesser director. In Fincher’s Gone Girl the story may be acidic but it all goes down shockingly smooth and — regardless of how uneasy one might feel afterwards — it’s tough not to enjoy every drop.
GONE GIRL directed by David Fincher starring Ben Affleck Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris now playing.
