Gone Girl

An Irish prince leaves his perfect wife at their perfect home. How perfect is his life? So much that on the night he fell in love with his wife, there was a storm of sugar surrounding them. There aren't many cinematographers better than Jeff Bronenweth, and his camera makes that scene, in particular, hauntingly beautiful. His excellent cinematography lights a dark, dark world, as is often the case in the movies of David Fincher, the Prince of Darkness. When the man comes home, his wife is gone. His perfect world is turned upside down.

The man in our movie is Nick Dunne, played by Ben Affleck. He goes to a bar to drink with the bartender, who incidentally is his sister (Carrie Coon). Why is he drinking? Why not--it's his fifth year wedding anniversary. The bar is under the name of his wife, played by Rosamund Pike in her best performance. Pike's debut was as a Bond girl in "Die Another Day" a little more than a decade ago, but she hasn't really been given a chance to prove herself since. Here, however, she really shines, in a performance that will (or at least should) get her an Oscar nomination. Her character, Amy, is, in the first half of the movie a "complicated" woman, a "nagging shrew" whom no one particularly likes. But that would be too simple. In the second half, it's an entirely different story for her. I cannot elaborate, but I am permitted to say my opinion of the twist, which is this: While it did provide Pike with an opportunity to demonstrate her talent, it also produced some eyeball-rolling. In the history of dumb movie twists, this might be one of the dumbest.

But back to our couple. Nick is remarkably calm considering his wife has just disappeared. While it can only be natural to side with him as an audience member, the evidence is clearly piling up against him in the movie, and an objective detective (Kim Dickens) continually grills him. Our story bounces back and forth so that we see just how bad Nick and Amy were at marriage; it's as if it could have been titled "Scenes from a Marriage About to Turn Mysterious and Violent." The wife is increasingly frightened by her husband, and perhaps vice versa.

There are a lot of compelling moments here about cable media's obsession with scandal, dangerous "Fatal Attraction"-style marriages, and other human flaws. But one cannot help but feel that these would all be so much more interesting to think about while reading the novel. It seems almost inevitable to think unfavorably about a film adaption if one has seen the original material beforehand, but I haven't read "Gone Girl," and yet I know I would have had a better experience reading it than watching the movie. Yet probably the most interesting ideas (in the novel or the movie) are the gender issues. Despite the fact that improvements for women have been one of the most impressive gains in the rights revolutions we've seen over the past century, we still live in an unfortunate era where women are not only underrepresented but shockingly mistreated (to say the very least). Here, we have a story where women are not only capable of such disturbing violence, but they are also the most interesting characters. Well done, Fincher and company.

Fincher's directing is commendable as always, but his storytelling is a bit weak. Frankly, I often have this reaction when watching many of his films. Other than "Se7en," I can't think of an instance where I was totally amazed at his filmmaking. But he has, at least, gotten quality performances from his players, especially Pike and Affleck. Affleck, who won Oscars for writing "Good Will Hunting" and producing "Argo," has shown us arguably his best performance, and Pike, as mentioned, has never been better. The actors in smaller roles--Dickens, Tyler Perry as Affleck's attorney and Neil Patrick Harris as a rich man who has been obsessing over Amy for years--likewise are quite enjoyable to watch. But while the actors are sufficient and mostly have been given satisfying words from screenwriter Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the novel), this is ultimately a mediocre film. After an incredible climax, it goes on for another unwelcomed twenty minutes. It's certainly intriguing but, like most Fincher movies, forgettable.