Written by Alexander Cheves
Photo courtesy of Creative Commons
David Fincher has some impressive directing credits under his belt: “Fight Club,” “Zodiac,” “The Social Network,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” His films are dark, sexy, stylized. They also have a tendency to drag on until they can do no more, ending in a whimper rather than a bang. In some dark editing room, Fincher it seems is perpetually bent over whispering, “One more scene, guys. Come on. One more scene!”
In other words, he’s the perfect man to direct “Gone Girl,” the film adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s successful 2012 novel of the same name. Flynn’s book, which is about the long-term psychological effects of a long-term relationship (warning: side effects may include death), has one of the most unsatisfying endings in recent memory. And that is absolutely the point.
The film begins on the morning of Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Nick (Ben Affleck) saunters wearily into a bar called “The Bar” like a modern day cowboy with a subscription to GQ Magazine. He’s got that Midwestern look with the meaty chin, the kind that reads lovable bad boy. He complains to the bartender—a young Joan Cusack lookalike—about his various marriage problems. We learn that every anniversary since the first has gotten progressively worse.
The bartender, who turns out to be Nick’s sister, answers the phone. It’s his neighbor—Nick’s cat has gotten out. When he arrives home, carries the cat inside and searches the house, he realizes that his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) is missing. Before long it’s everything you saw in the trailer: cops with twangy, overdone Missouri accents make their appearance, accuse Nick of murder, and soon enough all the evidence is mounted up against him.
But the evidence seems almost too convenient. There are letters left by his wife—white envelopes with “Clue One,” “Clue Two” and “Clue Three” written on them—presumably as an anniversary treasure hunt. There’s blood on the kitchen floor. There’s a diary hidden in a basement, the last sentence reading, “My husband may kill me.” Pike’s voice-over narration sounds a bit too much like Brenda Strong’s episode wrap-ups from “Desperate Housewives,” but we let her get away with it because, come on guys, she’s missing.
What unravels is a (long) movie filled with plot twists, surprises, and a delightful sex scene where someone’s jugular is slashed with a box cutter. Watching those two attractive people writhing in all that blood, I thought to myself, “Now this is filmmaking!”
David Fincher again delivers a lineup of solid performances led by Pike, who shines in a fierce, takes-no-prisoners take on the title character. Fincher has a record of directing powerful female performances, and I expected nothing less. And even if Tyler Perry’s lawyer character is a little too lighthearted and annoyingly out-of-place, in such a tightly-wound movie he gives us room to breathe.
All the same, the ending is far too similar to Fincher’s other films. Like the weak endings of “The Social Network” and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” before it,
“Gone Girl” closes with a series of short scenes that feel like flashbacks delivered, bizarrely, at the end of the movie. The film lacks any kind of punch before the credits start rolling lazily up the screen as if to say, “Well, here we are. The movie’s over.”
Such a waif of an ending makes me hope that author Gillian Flynn, who wrote the screenplay, intended it that way, almost as a reiteration: in case you didn’t realize it sometime during the two hours you just spent watching this, marriage ends badly. Regardless of how strong it starts, it will peter out not only into tense, silent dinners and illicit affairs, but also into relentless cruelty.
