Movie Review: Gone Girl

First off, this movie is messed up. 

Secondly, it was well written, well acted, creepy and twisted... 

and thirdly (is that a word?) it is an interesting commentary on modern life and marriage. 

This post is going to be littered with spoilers...so if you haven't seen Gone Girl and are planning to, try to skip over the SPOILER marked sections, since this is one of those movies that loses something if you see all the twists coming. I knew more going into the movie than I should, having read the PluggedIn review that didn't sufficiently alert you to spoilers. So consider yourself warned before you take a look at their site.

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For a while, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) is living the dream. He's a writer living in New York City, living in a nice apartment with his gorgeous and brilliant wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike). Then things slowly begin to unravel. Due to the recession, Nick loses his job, then Amy does as well. Amy's parents need to tap into her trust fund because they are having major financial difficulties. Then Nick finds out his mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer...so he and Amy pack up and move back to Missouri, where his mother, father and twin sister, Margo (Carrie Coon) still live. Not long after his mother passes away. And then, on their 5th wedding anniversary, Amy disappears... 

The picture above is both the opening and closing shot of the movie...and it worked really well. The narration that accompanies it in the opening start things straight off with an "...excuse me, what?" moment and then rounds out the story in the end as well. I have not read the book, so I don't know if the scenes were set similarly, but I applaud the director's choice and creativity (if this was his own idea) for setting the movie up this way.

I have two cousins - Michael and Danny Jolls - who watch and review most new movies that come out. I saw their reviews before going to see Gone Girl and decided to include them below.


Danny Jolls
October 4th
"Gone Girl" is the ultimate battle of the sexes - between two horribly despicable people. Director David Fincher takes his dark style and recurring theme of "no one is safe" to the setting of a marriage - therefore, this is not one happy couple. Journalism and the swaying fragility of the media is brought into play as well - almost effortlessly. Every fractured character of this riveting murder mystery fits his or her place perfectly, and we, the audience, are left to judge them, though it's tough to take anyone's side here. It's dark, it's slick, and Fincher utilizes Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' music the best here than any of his other films - "Gone Girl" is exactly like the fictionalized shroud around Amy (played by Rosamund Pike): amazing. 10/10

(SPOILERS contained below)
Michael Jolls 
October 3rd
David Fincher's "Gone Girl" is the definition of a 2007 quote from Esquire magazine: 'Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.' This mindset remains the cusp of Fincher's resume, full of unfriendly films - all of which must answer now to Rosamund Pike. "Gone Girl" is the rebuttal to Fincher's own mindset - odd as it sounds, we the audience, have always been on the safe side following along with the investigation, whether it's Morgan Freeman in "Se7en", Jake Gyllenhaal in "Zodiac", or Daniel Craig in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". Yes, the results are abhorrent and depressing - but lets turn the tables: lets make you, the audience, cheer for the wrong side. Sure we enjoy the sick pleasure of watching the villain-protagonists in "Se7en" (Kevin Spacey) and "Fight Club" (Brad Pitt) - but do we truly sympathize with them? Does our consciousness really approve, let alone the ability to justify decapitating people and/or blowing up buildings? The happily married Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike of small-town Missouri make "Se7en" look easy. "Gone Girl" is by far one of Fincher's most frustrating and superbly crafted pieces, in that the characters find themselves mocked by phony news media and trapped in psycho-sexual assault. Gillian Flynn's amazing novel surprisingly makes a very smooth transaction to screen, where the movie doesn't pander the source material and re-crafts moments to make it more cinematically pleasing. Fincher's films often talk to one another through his auteurism, and "Gone Girl" directly picks up from the final scene in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" - Rooney Mara is a hero with dignity. Rosamund Pike is a nightmare that won't go away.

And I agree with both of them.

I love Rosamund Pike. She is beautiful, graceful and elegant. She is great Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (2005), as Helen in Jack Reacher (2012),  Nikki in Fracture (2007), and the first movie (series) I ever saw her in - Wives and Daughters (1999) as Lady Harriet. Because of this - the general sweetness and caring disposition she portrays so well, she was perfect in the role of Amy. (SPOILERS) The movie starts out with you feeling badly for Amy...she's bright and accomplished, but always felt like second best. Her parents wrote a children's book series called Amazing Amy, in which the fictional Amy was always a step ahead of the real one. Amy gave up playing a musical instrument in grade school...Amazing Amy was a child prodigy. Amy wanted a pet...Amazing Amy got a dog in the book because it made her more relatable. Amazing Amy is getting married in the latest book...and Amy is still single (though dating Nick at the time). When Amy goes missing, her parents set up a hotline to call with any information of her whereabouts, as well as a website...www.findamazingamy.com. But the more you find out about her, her background, her personality and character, the less amazing you feel about Amy.

(SPOILERS) This movie might be my first exception to the notion of "I don't want to get type cast as a good girl" being stupid. Most actresses who fight the stereotype take on raunchy rolls just to "prove" they can do something other than play the nice girl. The fact that Rosamund Pike is generally a "good girl" (at least in most of the things I've seen her in) is part of what makes her performance stellar in Gone Girl. You come into it supportive of her...already liking her more than Ben Affleck, who was also cast really well in that you like hating him right from the get go (he is not Batman!). But Rosamund Pike keeps doing and acting in ways you're not expecting, since they're rather unlike her...which makes it amazing. She plays calculating and manipulative to a T...jumping from plan A to plan B when she hits a roadblock (figuratively, not literally) and then from B to C in the course of about 30 seconds. You can practically see the wheels turning as she plots her next move. It's amazing and creepy...to the point of Matt saying "I'm never getting married" when we walked out of the movie. :)

And some more SPOILERS. The reason I said it was an interesting commentary on modern marriage is because it's a larger-than-life picture of how society views marriage. Sure, you're not supposed to cheat on your spouse, but people are rarely surprised by it anymore. You love who you love, right? If your spouse isn't providing you the emotional/physical/financial support you need and you're not happy, then it's their fault for not living up to your expectations. Nick gets caught by his sister Margo cheating on Amy (with a college student...eww), he says that things have been bad for a while...that coming home from work he could feel Amy's disappointment before he even walked in the door and so hated being at home.He complained to his sister about a scavenger hunt that Amy always put together for him on their anniversary...he said it was fun the first couple of years, but then it just became a way for her to parade his inadequacy when he couldn't solve the personal little riddles.  Amy comments on how Nick changed and was no longer the man she had agreed to marry. Nick was planning to ask Amy for a divorce the day she disappeared...which also happened to be their 5th anniversary. They are both so selfish in their relationship...thinking only of themselves, of their own needs, wants, desires. Their marriage is not one based on mutual respect, love and care...it's not one where you're looking out for the other person, making sure to take care of them while they are taking care of you. Theirs is not the marriage of fairy tales (although it appears to be at first), nor like your grandparents who have been together for 50 years. Theirs is new and modern and built on sand...which ends up crashing down on them.

Mini side-rant...though not a fan of excessive profanity, I can deal with it in a movie, mostly since there's nothing I can do about it. Anyone who knows me is aware it's not my fave...and some words bother me more than others. Like the F-word...frequently overused. I am massively not a fan of the word b*tch, especially when it's directed at a woman...though there are legitimately a couple times in Gone Girl when I would have said it too, if I'd been the character. But in general, its use is one of the easiest ways to tick me off...and just produces a "you call that yelling? I'll show you yelling!" mode. :)  But a disturbing trend I'm noticing in movies and even cable TV shows is the use of the C-word...which is never acceptable. Talk about the quickest way to getting slapped, if we're talking about a real life situation. I really hope it's something that goes by the wayside quickly. It's used 4 times in Gone Girl...all during one conversation. A number of other words could have been used as a substitute, including b*tch...and yet...

It should also come as no surprise to anyone that I generally prefer my movies sans sex and nudity. Shocker, I know. There is one "necessary" sex scene...I use the word loosely, though they couldn't have been pulled it off much differently and still managed the same WTF they were shooting for in that scene. Ditto for another scene where there's nudity but no sex. (SPOILERS) There's one with Nick (Ben Affleck) and his college age mistress where she ends up topless - the rest is less explicit. All I could think of was a.) if she had been wearing a bra it wouldn't have taken anything away from the scene. You want us to know he's an ass and scumbag, yes? I would have gotten the same impression if she's been wearing her unmentionables. And 2.) if I were Jennifer Gardner, I would have slapped him, again for the unnecessary nature of the nakedness. Bleh. There's also a scene of the first time Nick and Amy are "together"...which could have been done much more tastefully...or left out. We know they're were smitten right from the get go...I don't need a graphic depiction of it, thanks. The short version...you see more of Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike and Neil Patrick Harris (played Desi Collins) than you ever wanted to see. Bleh-heh-heh...an butt. :S

Which leads me to a minor side track...the casting of Neil Patrick Harris in the roll of Desi. Everyone was cast perfectly...including Carrie Coon as Margo, Nick's twin sister (my favorite character in the movie, I think)...except Neil Patrick Harris. I love him...he's a great actor and performed well in the movie. But every time I looked at him, I saw Neil Patrick Harris, not Desi. It didn't help that some of his lines were a bit Barney-ish (from How I Met Your Mother)...but I think someone else would have been a better choice for that part. No offense, NPH.

After seeing Gone Girl on Tuesday night, it made me think of an old Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain movie called "Leave Her to Heaven" (1945). It's amazing and dark movie, very well acted with a very interesting storyline. If you've never seen it, I would highly recommend it! There are some very interesting parallels between it and Gone Girl.

Quick side track from that...when I was looking into Leave Her to Heaven, I read up on Jeanne Crain. She was quite a women...she was married to the same man for 58 years (they were married on New Years Eve, 1945), had 7 children and died 2 months after her husband (of a heart attack) in 2003 at the age of 78.

Gone Girl was a really good, really weird movie that I can't exactly recommend due to all the sex/nudity...though both would be easier to deal with if you waited for it to come out on DVD (yay fast forward button...or as Monk would say, "picture go faster!"). That's what I'd planned to do, but got talked into seeing it in theaters...and it probably would have been the better option.

Enjoy and happy Friday!


~ Katie


Fun Facts:
- Ben Affleck postponed directing a film in order to work with David Fincher. "He's the only director I've met who can do everybody else's job better than they could," states Affleck. On set one day, Affleck changed the lens setting on a camera an almost indiscernible amount, betting a crew member that Fincher wouldn't notice. "But goddammit if he didn't say, 'Why does the camera look a little dim?'"
- In order to figure out his character, Ben Affleck researched and studied several men who were accused and convicted of killing their wives. He paid particular attention to Scott Peterson.
- Originally Nick was supposed to wear a Yankees cap in one scene. But Affleck, a die-hard Red Sox fan, refused to wear it. Ultimately he and Fincher compromised and in that scene he wears a Mets cap.
- Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron, Natalie Portman, Emily Blunt, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Abbie Cornish and Julianne Hough were considered for the role of Amy Dunne.
- For her performance, Rosamund Pike drew inspiration from Nicole Kidman's performance in To Die For (1995) and Sharon Stone's in Basic Instinct (1992). She also studied Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy Jr., for her body language and aloof mood.
- Ben Affleck and his character Nick Dunne were both born on August 15.
- Wife killer suspect Nick (Ben Affleck) is interviewed by Sharon Schieber (Sela Ward) who, coincidentally, played Helen Kimble the murdered wife of suspected wife killer Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) in The Fugitive (1993).