Damn girl

This time last year I made it well-publicized that I thought Gravity would be a dominant force at the Oscars, and while I’m hesitant to declare the same thing with such confidence this year, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have similar gut feelings about Gone Girl. Director David Fincher’s vision of Gillian Flynn’s 2012 source novel is a perfectly-measured blend of casting, music, and storytelling, a near identical companion to Flynn’s saw tooth-edged writing.

The story begins with a simple catalyst: Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home from his bar to find his front door unlocked and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing (guess you could also say ‘gone’) on what was to be their five year anniversary. Nick, a failed writer and current drunk, contacts the police, unaware the incident would soon become a widespread media phenomenon with him as the main suspect. His inability to express seemingly any emotion about his missing wife (could it be stress? Nerves? Guilt?) makes the media suspicious of him, and their suspicions strengthen when a trail of clues (some literally in envelops marked ‘Clue One’) start popping up, each adding to the suspicion.

His behavior is especially odd when you consider how in love Nick and Amy were at the beginning of their marriage five years ago. Through flashbacks interweaved in the main story read from Amy’s diary in Pike’s regal drawl of a voice, the audience sees Nick, a completely different person with actual emotions, wooing Amy by kissing her in a cloud of sugar behind a bakery. The two are a perfect couple challenged with radical circumstances – both are soon laid off, Nick’s mom gets sick – and soon the flaws of their personalities start revealing themselves.

The story crescendos onward with more twists and turns than a normal mystery film, all building to the truly shocking reality of what happened in Nick and Amy’s marriage. Fincher’s direction mixed with an original dark, haunting score created by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (their third collaboration with Fincher, after the Oscar winning The Social Network soundtrack) subtly urge the plot forward with a quiet hum, allowing Affleck and Pike to master their character’s complex personalities and control the screen.

The true star here is Gillian Flynn who adapted the screenplay from her novel, though. Her story is a writhing maze of plot twists and harsh realities, told through an exaggerated, but ultimately accurate view of what can happen to marriages in modern day. She found the perfect match in Fincher, Affleck, and Pike, which is thankfully a marriage of talent much more stable than Nick and Amy’s.

4.5/5 stars