In 1997, when David Fincher made The Game, his own game was afoot. In relating the tale of a man thrust into life-changing manipulations as a birthday gift, the director made plain his fascination with the toying and teasing that characterises human behaviour and intimate relationships. This thematic refrain lingers throughout his output, from Seven and Zodiac’s cat-and-mouse serial killer chases to Fight Club’s splintering of identity, and including The Social Network’s clinical business manoeuvring and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s sinister family dynamic as well. With a calm approach to match his constantly cold aesthetics, Fincher depicts people purposefully playing with the emotions of others – not only obvious antagonists, but their loved ones, too. The appearance of propriety in interactions is exposed as a façade, and the threads of connection are shown as tenuous at best.
It is from this cynicism-fuelled pedigree that Gone Girl springs, the filmmaker’s latest contemplation of the unkindness inherent in even the supposedly strongest of bonds looking, sounding and feeling every inch a seamless inclusion in his oeuvre. Adapting the best-selling novel of the same name via a script penned by Gillian Flynn, the book’s author, Fincher’s current target of interrogation is that idyllic fantasy of adult romance: the idea of living happily ever after. A seemingly perfect couple graduates from inner-city cool to suburban comfort, weathering several storms of middle-class misfortune until inescapable tragedy strikes on their fifth anniversary. When Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck, Runner Runner) returns home, sparked by a neighbour’s concerns for his wandering cat, he finds his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike, The World’s End) missing, and signs of a struggle evident.
He exclaims – to his supportive twin sister Margo (Carrie Coon, TV’s The Leftovers), to Amy’s concerned parents (J. Edgar’s David Clennon and Royal Pains’ Lisa Banes), to the police leading the case (Treme’s Kim Dickens and Thanks for Sharing’s Patrick Fugit), and to the hounding media – that he had nothing to do with her disappearance, though as time passes, suspicion naturally mounts. She laments – in excerpts of a diary intercut into as flashbacks, chronicling their joyous courtship, blissful first years of wedlock, and the encroaching of distance and distrust in their union as time passed – that she is certain her downfall will come at the hands of her increasingly far-from-doting husband.
So it is that Nick is cast as the possible perpetrator and Amy as the likely victim, yet Gone Girl is far from simplistic or straightforward in its story or structure, nor does it shy away from the adage that appearances can be deceiving. In calculatedly cutting between their two viewpoints in a fine display of fleet editing, the film becomes an adversarial account of modern marriage, first adorned with all the trimmings, then plagued by all the trappings, and finally subverting all the tropes. Who this couple became in their time together, a period pledged as perpetual, is the true narrative – as well as what they’ve each driven each other to. Standard and multiple thriller twists sustain the immersive murder mystery; however it is the discarding of dreams and the development of coping mechanisms not for life in general, but for years spent living with one’s significant other, which furnishes the feature’s core.
With gameplay rampant between spouses, across the law and order divide, and in the narrative told through the news, Fincher tells a dark and devastating tale that’s one part police procedural, one part couples’ therapy gone wrong – but also deliciously comic, as well. There’s no mistaking the humour that insidiously permeates from setting the institution of matrimony on a clear course for destruction, as scathing a rendering of relationships as Ingmar Bergman’s seminal Scenes from a Marriage or even the more overtly comedic recent Norwegian offering Force Majeure. Perspective and pretence combine in a dissection of roles and reasoning, and the astute satirical statements don’t stop there. How everyone else reacts – embodied in the media circus’ pronounced public wailing, most notably – is as influential and insightful as the differences between Nick and Amy’s interpretations of their lack of communication and understanding of each other, reinforcing the chasm between societal expectation and sad reality.
The director’s now trademark haunting slickness, embodied in crisp lensing by cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and a chillingly foreboding electronic score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, all veterans of Fincher’s past two films, further heightens the strands of similarity throughout his resume. It is his knack for casting, however, that solidifies both his style and cements his scepticism, eliciting an apt mix of acceptance and unreliability in his duelling lead characters. Affleck and Pike may not be the vision of the Dunnes imagined by the book’s fans, but their nuanced performances are superbly suited to the he says, she says dynamic that sustains the drama of domesticity gone wrong. A vast supporting cast is rounded out with plot-serving displays from Tyler Perry’s (Alex Cross) scheming lawyer, Neil Patrick Harris’ (A Million Ways to Die in the West) desperate ex, and Casey Wilson’s (Happy Endings) gullible best friend, and particularly enlivened by the excellent Coon, Dickens and a brief appearance by Scoot McNairy (The Rover).
From its page-turner origins to its precise point-of-view framing to its perceptive portrayals, Gone Girl thus becomes a disarmingly adroit and bleakly persuasive study of the ripples of deception in the closest of quarters, and the dextrous methods employed to sustain a picture of normality – marriage in a nutshell, Fincher mischieviously posits. Indeed, if ever an effort was to give filmic flesh to irreconcilable interpersonal differences and the resulting trickery and treachery, this is it. The director’s gambit is afoot once more.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Gone Girl
Director: David Fincher
USA, 2014, 149 mins
Release date: October 2
Distributor: Fox
Rated: MA
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