'Gone Girl' - Review

Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) returns home one afternoon to find that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing. A media storm erupts around Nick and he comes under scrutiny from his wife’s family, his own sister and soon the entire country as the search for Amy begins. This takes us to the turning point of David Fincher’s Gone Girl, when the story becomes split between Nick and the investigation on the one hand and extracts from his wife’s diary read by Amy herself on the other. A seemingly run-of-the-mill kidnapping mystery soon becomes an intense scrutiny of the secrecy within a marriage and the true natures of suspect and culprit.

Rosamund Pike, who I first remember seeing as the badly-written Bond girl in Die Another Day has come a long way in the past few years, making a string of appearances in major blockbusters but never fully realising her full talent. Fincher has brought out her best performance to date, a noirish femme fatale combination of dangerous elegance and a piercing icy gaze. The much maligned but extremely talented Ben Affleck remains inscrutable from the start, his cold, almost uncaring façade exciting a million different questions and suspicions within the viewer.

Fincher is always at his best when working in the dark, and his long-time collaboration with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth has flourished into a near-perfect entwinement of narrative and visuals. The shadows pouring in from windows or shrouding the edges of the frame are pitch black, inescapable and unsympathetic, whilst the daytime camerawork is draped in a cool blue-grey palette that is a much needed respite from the gritty, grimy colours that infect the frame of many contemporary thrillers.

The cool, clean cinematography lends itself well to the whole feel of the film, where everything is examined coldly and carefully like a crime scene. Characters and locations are scrutinised implacably by the camera, whatever their intentions, whether guilty or innocent. As clean-cut as a forensic report and as intricately constructed as well-planned murder, the film also dabbles in voyeurism and genuine nastiness. Never mind the characters; the frame itself is never above suspicion.

Trent Reznor too returns to Fincher’s side to score the film and provides a grinding, pulsating soundtrack that bubbles slowly beneath the surface before bursting out in sharp spikes of fury as the twists emerge. Consider my previous annoyance at Reznor for stealing the 2011 best original score Oscar out from Hans Zimmer’s nose temporarily revoked. In the case of Gone Girl, the former provides the musical backdrop to one of the most shocking, coiled-up-in-fear scenes I’ve seen projected on a cinema screen in too long.

A great deal has already been written concerning the sexual politics of the film, and it appears that a great deal of that discussion stems from the source novel and screenplay by Gillian Flynn; in purely filmic terms, a comparison to Fatal Attraction is very easily drawn. Without wishing to give too much away, a mystery-thriller rapidly gives birth to a full-blown ‘battle of the sexes’ drama. Whilst neither sex emerges above reproach, there were times where I worried that the legendary outcry from the audience of Fatal Attraction was more than mere possibility.

Gone Girl ranks among not only the greatest of Fincher’s work, but the great pieces of cinematic drama altogether. Coldly calculated, intelligent and at times darkly humorous, it makes the most of its 150-minute running time to fully unravel and develop interesting characters without ever feeling languorous or dull. One small piece of advice if you are planning to see it: think twice before taking a date.

5 stars