For Your Consideration: Gone Girl

With the hype glug turned up to overdrive and a myriad of posters wallpapering the country’s public transport, you’d be forgiven for concluding that Gone Girl (the movie) is this year’s Gone Girl (the novel).

Gone Girl (2014)

I sometimes think that Ben Affleck actually likes being the centre of attention. Like the proverbial moth to the hackneyed flame, he goes from insanely high profile insane marriage to the nut from the Bronx, to directing some actually decent cinema, before signing up to play the world’s favourite bat (Batfink fans, you’re in the minority – deal with it).

I suppose choosing a vocation in acting is a bit of a giveaway too. And now it’s spreading to the characters he plays. Nick Dunne is castigated on every cable TV station in America when his ostensibly perfect wife goes missing from their Missourian home on their fifth wedding anniversary. As we see Dunne being dragged through the mire, flashbacks paint the picture of a marriage with the same trajectory as Mickey Rourke’s career; cool and sexy turning ugly and violent. But is he really any more guilty of uxoricide than I am of using online dictionaries?

Gone Girl is the celluloid equivalent of a literary page turner. Even despite its close-to-epic running time, it’s never anything other than compelling. Gillian Flynn has crafted a screenplay from her own novel that moves at pace without damaging the vital levels of suspense. And having David Fincher at the helm – a man who could direct as high quality thriller as this in his sleep – prevents any sense of a complacency that would condemn the project to the mediocrity that so often mars adaptations of crazy selling books. Fincher has been vocal in expressing his determination not to simply appeal to the prefabricated mass audience, and it shows in the quality of this polished, tense product. But anybody hoping for a new baby sister to those troubled teenaged twin love children to mama ‘grit’ and papa ‘style’ – Se7en and Fight Club – will feel somewhat disappointed. The off-its-tits absurdity of the final third doesn’t entirely blunt the tension, but it certainly dulls the dark edge shared by those two aforementioned bona fide classics.

And this almost comic batshit nuts tomfoolery also dents any perception that Gone Girl is a postmortem of the modern marriage. It is surprise to read some reviewers perceiving the portrayal of the Dunne’s union as a savage on-the-money dissection of marriage as an institution. Considering that at least one of the duo in question is a high-functioning psychopath, drawing comparisons to one’s own relationships is pure folly. Unless this simply proves, as many people have speculated for years, that I am the high-functioning psychopath in my relationship.

Fincher’s most cutting social commentary here is its caustic spotlight on how the ivory-towered caprice of the media has the power and predilection to utterly decimate a man’s character. It doesn’t take long for a gossip mongering Cable TV show hosted by a bombastic harridan (played with relish by Missi Pyle) to begin ripping to Nick to shreds. On top of being accused of murdering his wife, charges of apathy, philandering and even incest are dredged up to feed the baying appetite of a schadenfreude hungry public. Every gesture and syllable is picked apart by the media circus; a trial by jury in the mould of Christopher Jefferies or the McCanns.

But this is an easy target for Fincher, and Gone Girl should primarily be enjoyed at it’s base level as a fun and never-not-watchable thriller. It’s this one dimensionality that should prevent it being in the running for any of the top prizes on Oscar night next year, although it’s easy to imagine that perennial acclaimed Fincher collaborators such as cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, editor Kirk Baxter and composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will be invited to dust off their well worn dinner jackets.

Affleck continues to blaze his trail as a weighty and reliable lead, and it’s difficult not to enjoy Pike’s performance for its complete chasm of nuance – but neither should rouse the Academy members. Fincher was brave to cast relative unknowns in the main supporting roles of such a high profile picture, but they really work. Carrie Coon is particularly strong as Dunne’s twin sister caught in the archetypal conflict of wanting to support her kith and kin but finding it increasingly difficult in light of the evidence against him. Kim Dickens is amiable as the as the Marge Gunderson-esque detective and Fincher brings the best out of Tyler Perry’s natural charisma as Dunne’s lawyer with a reputation for keeping wife killers out of prison.

They’re just further chapters to enjoy in this fun holiday-read of a thriller. Just don’t be too surprised when, after finishing the final page, you shove it back in the bookcase without giving it a great deal of thought to where it’s gone.

Gone Girl; 2014; Dir: David Fincher; Stars: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike; Carrie Coon; 150 mins; 7/10; Probable nominations: Best Cinematography (Jeff Cronenweth), Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), Best Editing (Kirk Baxter); Possible nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Ben Affleck), Best Supporting Actress (Rosamund Pike), Best Adapted Screenplay (Gillian Flynn)