David Fincher’s latest film is a tense thriller with a plot that twists and turns and wretches like a snake with his head chopped off.
While that might sound like a condemnation, it is quite the opposite.
Gone Girl is tells the story of Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a
man who finds himself in the middle of a media circus after his wife, Amy
(Rosamund Pike) goes missing. Fincher and his long time collaborator and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth continue to create mesmerizing images that are as beautiful as they are grotesque.
Gone Girl is a gooey, grimy film at its core, dealing with
some tough issues of the modern day; Mass media fueled by tabloid headlines,
souring of marital relationships and the defining of gender roles in such marriages. All are some of the themes that bubble to the surface in a film that
could be compared to classic 1930’s noir films.
The film has a guttural “nastiness”, echoed by a stirring
score composed by Trent Rezner and Atticus Ross. The pair also scored Fincher’s
most recent films The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Social Network. “The
Way He Looks At Me”, a track found within the film, is particularly revolting.
The music builds from a sticky, repetitive percussion and crescendos into a
psychotic busyness, driven by a deep, dark, reverberation. The image of banging
on a metal trashcan filled with vomit is the only image that comes to mind when attempting to describe such sonic reverberations. It may be “nasty”, but
the soundtrack mirrors the emotional and psychological tones of the film
perfectly.
“Gone Girl” features a smartly cast ensemble. Ben Affleck,
who has been touted as the poster boy of the film, performs brilliantly. Nick Dunne acquires the audience’s sympathy at points, but also has moments of
egotistical smugness that keep the viewer at a distance.
Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens and Neil Patrick
Harris all turn in shining performances, but the brightest star of the show is
clearly Rosamund Pike, who explodes off the screen. Pike has likely cemented
her place in Hollywood after a horrifically magnificent, career defining
performance.
Pike’s Amy Dunne is a femme fetal that evolves into
something much more sinister, something more akin to Cathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes
from John Carpenter’s “Misery”.
In all, Fincher’s masterful direction paired with longtime collaborators Jeff Cronenweth and Trent Reznor & Attickus Ross leads to one of the more memorable films of the year, and
is likely to be an early Academy Awards contender in more categories than one.
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