Runtime: 2 hours, 28 minutes
Rating: R
Director: David Fincher
Quick Impressions:
I’ve been more excited for Gone Girl than for any other 2014 movie so far, and I have absolutely no idea why. I mean, I like David Fincher, but I’m not his most rabid fan ever or anything. I haven’t even read Gillian Flynn’s wildly popular novel. And I love Ben Affleck—as a director. But he’s not directing this, so…?
What specifically appealed to me so much about this project? I do not have clue one. (I did really love the early trailer set to Elvis Costello’s “She,” but that is not what piqued my interest originally.) Ever since I first heard that Fincher was directing and Affleck was starring in Gone Girl—which was more than a year ago—I felt the inexplicable imperative to see the film at all costs.
I don’t get it, but I will say that the film lived up to my (high, though vague) expectations.
Until I saw the movie, I knew nothing at all about the plot (beyond the basic hook that a man’s wife disappears). I knew there would be plot twists. I knew that Rosamund Pike’s performance has been getting some early Oscar buzz. (And I’ve always liked Rosamund Pike. She was definitely a bright spot in Die Another Day, the film in which I first noticed her.)
To be honest, the Oscary vibe (David Fincher + Ben Affleck) is probably what first lured me to Gone Girl. This does feel like the first sure Oscar contender of the fall. (I’m pretty sure Boyhood will get some nominations, too, but that was a summer movie.)
But setting Oscar expectations aside, purely on the level of entertainment, Gone Girl is a pretty great movie. I wish that my husband had seen it with me. It’s the kind of film that demands a repeat viewing, so I hope that I get the opportunity to watch it again. (It’s not that the plot is confusing. It’s that once you’ve seen the end, you suspect you might view the beginning differently a second time.)
The Good:
Gone Girl doesn’t feel over two hours long because it’s remarkably engrossing. I haven’t read Gillian Flynn’s novel, but I imagine it must be a page-turner. Her screenplay relies on two big things to keep the audience fascinated, and the first is suspense.
David Fincher does prolonged suspense (so heightened that the audience’s skin begins to crawl) better than any other working director I can readily call to mind. (Honestly, I can think of very few non-working rivals either. Really, there’s only Alfred Hitchcock, and—as an enormous Hitchcock fan—I find Fincher’s brand of suspense so much scarier. I’m not calling it superior, necessarily, but scarier without a doubt.)
What makes the ongoing success of Fincher’s viscerally wrenching suspense scenes particularly uncanny is that roughly 100 percent of them end in nothing happening. (Now, I am sure that if I revisit every one of Fincher’s films, I’ll discover that occasionally something truly awful does cap a moment of heightened tension, but I still maintain that such examples are statistically insignificant.)
Almost all of the time, we get so worked up watching Fincher dial up the suspense surrounding a certain character that we practically fall off the edge of the theater seat and spill our popcorn all over the annoyed man in front of us (theoretically). And then after we’ve endured all that, nothing even happens.
But Fincher somehow always manages to make us feel that nothing is the worst and most unrelentingly terrifying thing that possibly could have happened. Maybe that’s because the other shoe has failed to drop, so in the backs of our minds, we all know that shoe 2 is still up there dangling around some place. (If Hollywood ever needs someone to direct The Sword of Damocles, Fincher’s their man. Of course, with him at the helm, we’d never actually get to see the sword.)
Nothing happens, and yet twenty minutes later, we still feel terrified, uneasy, and on edge. I mean, what if nothing happens again? Nothing could happen at any time. Nothing could happen to any one of us after we leave the theater and go on about our lives. In fact, it probably will. Again and again and again…until one day it doesn’t.
The movie Zodiac scared me to death for…I don’t know…ever? (To be honest, it still kind of scares me.) When I think back and try to remember precisely what scares me, two things come to mind immediately, 1) That scary part where Jake Gyllenhaal’s in the basement of that house, and 2) The fact that the Zodiac killer was never caught. And you know, as I write all this out now, I’m suddenly not so sure that those two things aren’t related.
Fincher’s films make it seem like until something horrible (inevitably) happens, what occurs in the meantime is nothing (yet).
So if you’ve been at a Fincher movie, later that night when you hear a rustling outside your door, you don’t think, “I wonder if I forgot to feed the cat.” And then when you open the door, you don’t say to yourself, “Oh wow, I can hear the leaves rustling in the distance. It sure is breezy tonight. There must be a cold front coming in. I love to hear the crickets chirping. Ooh! Is that an owl?”
No, if you’ve been at a Fincher film, you think, “Has someone come to murder me?” And then when you open the door and walk outside where the leaves are rustling in the breeze and the crickets are chirping and a potential owl may be hooting, you think, “Wow. Nothing happened. I guess I was wrong. Nobody’s here to murder me…yet.”
The thing that really fascinates me about this phenomenon is that practically all of his movies have scenes like this, so you know going in that you can expect at least one. And yet when it comes, it still manages to freak you out. (At least, it freaks me out.) And then even after that, if there’s another similarly anti-climactic scene, that scene still manages to freak you out, too (at least, it freaks me out again).
Just ask my husband about the day he had jury duty. We had seen Zodiac days before, and I was positive he was going to be murdered by the Zodiac Killer (who was never caught, remember) while he was at the courthouse, thus thwarting our upcoming wedding plans.
So he headed out for jury duty and left me alone in his apartment—until he came back for something unexpectedly. He thought, I don’t want to scare her. I’ll walk over to the bedroom door and knock softly. I thought, I know I couldn’t have heard someone come in the front door just now, but just in case, I’ll tiptoe to the bedroom door and peek out into the room. Surely when I open the door, nobody will be standing there!
He was about an inch from the door with his hand raised to knock when I pulled the door open expecting to see no one. I screamed so loudly I’m surprised he didn’t get evicted. And then, even after I recognized him, I fell over crying hysterically because I’d been so worked up, and it was too late for me to put the brakes on the aftermath of my visceral horror. Thanks a lot, David Fincher.
(You know who does pretty good jump scares, actually? M. Night Shyamalan. His method is sort of the inverse of Fincher. You’re not expecting anything to happen and then suddenly you realize that it’s already happened, and it’s bizarre and unthinkably horrible.)
But my point is, Gillian Flynn’s screenplay oozes suspense, and David Fincher knows exactly how to make the most of that on screen.
The other big thing the screenplay relies on to keep the audience hooked is humor, and that is not something you immediately associate with David Fincher.
It’s not that his stuff is never funny. (Fight Club is often hilarious.) It’s just that Fincher doesn’t really have a signature brand of humor that’s as readily recognizable (and consistent) as his trademark suspense.
In Gone Girl, the comedy is extremely dark, twisted, and sometimes subtle, but it’s also pervasive and (increasingly) relentless. We don’t really laugh out loud (at least not often), but as the movie goes on, we find ourselves smirking more and more.
Basically the movie works because it begins as a mystery so suspenseful we don’t dare look away. As the suspense lessens and we begin to figure out what’s going on, what we discover always makes us do a double take and react with a baffled smirk or puzzled laughter. The movie is equal parts suspense and comedy, and the two alternate (and kind of work in tandem). When we don’t know what’s going on, Gone Girl is actively puzzling and suspenseful. But then when we find out, it’s usually so crazy that it’s funny. But then another wrinkle comes into the plot, and the suspense begins to build again, followed by the release of suspense and more off-kilter humor. The more we understand, the less we can believe it. (I almost wrote, “the less we can relate to it,” and I do think that adds to our inclination to laugh, too.)
It’s a great story. I may read the novel now. Besides being wildly entertaining, Gone Girl is also pretty canny commentary on the type of media sensationalism that seems to rule the day.
The performances are excellent top to bottom.
This is a good part for Ben Affleck, a perfect fit for his skillset as an actor. He makes an excellent Nick Dunne, but Affleck’s been climbing in my estimation in general for quite a while. I love him as a director. I’ve loved every movie he’s directed, and based on his track record, I’d be excited to see anything he directs in the future, even if he makes a movie called Oatmeal Cooking: Seriously, That’s It.
I think he’s a truly exceptional director and suspect that what sometimes made him seem like a not-so-great actor in the past really had more to do with his getting typecast into parts that were not-so-great in movies that were mediocre at best. Maybe he’ll even get an Oscar nomination for this, but I tend to doubt that (unless the Academy tries to compensate for failing to nominate him for directing Argo). It’s not that Affleck’s performance isn’t good. It’s just that it’s so early in the year yet, and I know Best Actor is the most crowded category at the Academy Awards every single year.
His performance is good, though.
Rosamund Pike seems much more likely to get nominated. Again, there’s still so much that I haven’t seen yet, but this seems like a huge, breakthrough performance for her. I don’t think she’s ever had a role this plum before in such a big, high-profile project. And her performance as Amy is great. (Plus, she has the advantage over her co-star of not having to overcome the baggage of being Ben Affleck.) One of the reasons I’m eager to see the film a second time is to take Pike’s lead performance in again from the beginning.
For me, the real revelation was Carrie Coon playing Affleck’s sister Margo. I’ve never even heard of Carrie Coon! I’ve never seen her in anything. (Looking now, I’m guessing that she primarily does theater.) She’s absolutely marvelous. It helps, of course, that she’s playing one of the most sympathetic and relatable characters, but the performance itself is exceptional. I think she ought to be getting some recognition and attention herself. Nobody seems to be shouting her name from the rooftops at this point, so I’ll shout it myself. Carrie Coon gives a great performance here and should be considered for Best Supporting Actress this year.
I also loved Kim Dickens as the police detective. I’m not too familiar with her, either (although I do remember her in Thank You for Smoking), but she’s absolutely fantastic.
Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris are also great. Perry gives a pretty powerful and very convincing performance that made me wonder why he is not more often cast in mainstream dramas. (Maybe it’s a personal choice. He’s certainly very successful as Madea and as a director/producer.)
Harris plays probably my favorite character in the movie. (He’s great if you’re thinking about the movie from a writer’s point of view.) There’s a kind of unsettling ambiguity that surrounds Desi Collings throughout the film that makes the entire movie work. Not only do Harris’s scenes add a lot of suspense and complexity, but in many ways, the story would fall apart without Desi Collings.
The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is also just about perfect. It sets the ideal (and unusual) tone for the story and is also immensely compelling in its own right.
Best Scene:
To me the movie’s first big twist seemed not only foreseeable but also almost inevitable. (I mean, honestly, given the characters’ backgrounds, I would have been disappointed if something like that had not been the case. Any time you introduce multiple narrators, you draw attention to the fact that narrative may be unreliable.)
To my delight, Gone Girl does not run out of plot twists very soon. Once the film dispensed with what I would call the first major twist (though there are minor ones that come before), to my delight it became much more open and unpredictable.
Probably all of my favorite parts come after this because the movie is much more exciting then. What initially seemed like the big question of the film turns out not to be a question at all.
I love the last scene Lola Kirke and Boyd Holbrook have in the movie because honestly at that point you watch and think, “What will happen?”
Anything could happen!
There’s no longer this binary, this, “This or that?” kind of set up to the film. Instead it becomes more of a, “And what now?” affair. And that’s much more exciting!
Best Scene Visually:
There’s this one moment when Ben Affleck walks out of a building wearing a coat and proceeds from the far right side of the screen (as you’re facing it) over to the left side. I remember thinking, “Wow! That’s just an absolutely beautifully framed shot.” (I think he’s headed to the vigil. Does that help?)
I wouldn’t be surprised to see this movie get nominations for both cinematography and score.
The scene in the shower makes an unmistakable point, too. It’s like visual metaphor, a reduction of two conflicting viewpoints into a single image commenting powerfully on what love and marriage mean to Amy and to Nick.
Best Action Sequence:
I like Neil Patrick Harris’s last big scene. (Well, maybe like is the wrong word to use there. But I won’t be forgetting it anytime soon!) If—like my mother—you found certain scenes of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo off-putting and hard to watch, then you aren’t going to like this either.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Rosamund Pike:
Pike has a great moment that really can’t be used as an Oscar clip. We see her character quite a lot in flashbacks. Throughout the film, we get lots of reaction shots from Amy Dunne. But one of her reactions is far more interesting than the others. We can see her brain working, her mind changing about something. It’s almost funny. She pulls it off really well.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Ben Affleck:
Affleck’s best work in the film coincides with his character’s finest performance. I think he absolutely nails the TV interview with Sharon Schieber. (It almost feels like stunt casting to have him deny that he killed his wife to Sela Ward, who played the dead wife in The Fugitive.)
Affleck’s performance here is subtle, layered, complex, and weirdly charming.
He also has a very nice moment with Scoot McNairy (who is quite good in a small role).
Maybe Affleck will get an Oscar nomination, though as I’ve said, I find that hard to believe right now.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Carrie Coon:
Nobody’s talking much about Carrie Coon, but I will. I think she’s absolutely brilliant in the scene in the kitchen after she first learns about Andie, and excellent again in the kitchen near the very end of the film. Her passion is endearing and extremely (effortlessly) convincing. It’s a fantastically strong performance without being at all showy. She deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. I realize that then she’ll be competing with big names like Meryl Streep, but I can’t help that. She deserves the nomination. She’s fantastic in every scene and makes Margo by far the most sympathetic and relatable character in the movie.
The Negatives:
This is certainly a weird love story, but from a certain point of view, it has a decidedly happy ending. Doesn’t everyone deserve a chance to be happy?
One character I’d like to know much more about, though, is Desi Collings. I like Neil Patrick Harris’s performance, but I just wish we understood the character a bit better. Now granted, I think there’s a sort of necessary ambiguity clouding Collings that helps maintain suspense late in the movie once all the big mysteries have already been solved. Just for selfish reasons, though, I’d like to know a bit more about the guy. Scoot McNairy’s scene seemed so clear cut in comparison.
I also wish we’d been given a closer look at Amy’s parents. We see a lot of them, but our view is only superficial. What—if anything—is beneath the surface? That’s what I’d really like to know. Is there any more to know or is what we see as deep as these people get?
Gone Girl’s tone shifts quite a bit from start to finish, too. Initially, we’re in a serious drama that becomes increasingly suspenseful as it invites us to gather clues and solve a mystery. But as the story progresses, Gone Girl gradually becomes an increasingly unpredictable, dark, and absurd comedy. This isn’t really a problem because it’s all well done, but I’m sure the ending will lose some people. (My mother, for example, would hate it.) Some people are going to complain that the beginning is a bit dull and safe. Others will cringe and roll their eyes as the final act goes completely off the rails. I’m positive a lot of people will strongly prefer the early part of the movie to the later part, and vice versa. Fortunately, that should leave plenty of people like me who think the entire movie works even though it undergoes a sort of tonal metamorphosis as it progresses.
I did find it a bit hard to believe that neither Nick nor Go acts more quickly to prevent certain events from occurring, but then again, I think there must be something (however slight) to what Nick is told about himself in a very late scene, and that’s not something I would expect Margo to be able to anticipate or allow for in her decision making.
Overall:
I really enjoyed Gone Girl and keep turning it over in the back of my mind since seeing it. Right now (having seen few fall movies so far) I would expect this film to get Oscar nominations for picture, director, and actress, and I wouldn’t be surprised by nods for screenplay, score, and cinematography. Carrie Coon absolutely deserves a nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She convincingly plays one of the movie’s most resonant, sympathetic characters with few theatrics yet great intensity. And odds are, Rosamund Pike will actually get a nomination for Best Actress in what’s kind of like a breakthrough role for her (despite her long career). I’d really like to see her performance again from the beginning. That’s the biggest reason I want to rewatch the movie.
As Gone Girl ended, I felt an initial uncertainty. Yes, the two and a half hours had passed quickly and pleasantly. The movie was engrossing, equally well plotted, acted, directed, scored, and shot. Still, did I like it? Once it ended, did I feel satisfied?
I’m happy to report that with increasing distance, I’m finding I like Gone Girl more and more, and I hope I can watch it again soon. It’s not for everybody (though judging by the huge, relatively diverse crowd in the 11:45 matinee with me, it’s for almost everybody).
One word of caution. If you find Se7en and Fincher’s version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo too graphically violent, traumatic, and disturbing, then you’ll probably have similarly strong negative reactions to certain scenes in Gone Girl. (Definitely don’t take children.) But as long as sexual violence is not a trigger for you, then Gone Girl is probably worth at least two hours and twenty-eight minutes of your time. Hurry up and see it now before it’s gone.