A necessary antidote to our misplaced modern love!

Rating: 10/10 (1 December 2014)

Gone Girl is fascinating, and an interesting and amusing take on a dysfunctional marriage (Aren't all marriages dysfunctional?!). I would rather recommend that one should not approach the movie as a mystery suspense or thriller movie. Because that is secondary. The real story is the functioning of a couple, the real genre is the marriage. When two people, passionately in love, come together to tie the knot and say their ''till death do us part'', what happens? Are those fairy tales we watch real? Do we all live happily ever after? The brilliance of the movie lies in its surreal story that is told in an unambiguous, definitive way. There is not a shadow of doubt to as what happened in the movie, but the story itself comes somewhere from the dark recesses of the emotional labyrinthine, a thought we dared not to think, an idea killed at its inception. That is what Gone Girl does. And that is exactly what Fincher loves to do. Tap the darkness. But its darkness is also why sometimes movie indulges in excesses. It is as if Fincher just couldn't get enough of it and overdoes it. Like a child bestowed with the toys he had wanted all along, Fincher just couldn't let it go. Also up to three fourths of the movie, the scale seems to be nicely balanced between Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck, but after that Ben Affleck seems like a victim and the wife as the abuser which many may think to be misogynistic in portrayal, but for me it was just unfair and a blot in otherwise a brilliant take on marriage. In spite of these flaws, Gone Girl is a fantastic movie. Gone Girl ridicules the notion of true love set by the standards of our happily ever afters and the happiness in marriage that this society preaches. Our insatiable diet for the happily ever afters. But then the movie also talks about the beauty of it (as both confess they bring out the best of each other), and it is what makes it so twisted and self destructive. A deal with the devil! Apart from love and marriage, the movie also sets out to give light to the illusory nature of perception propagandized by the media. The movie in the first half is itself ripe of manipulation and debauchery feeding off the ideas that we are too eager and judgemental to make. And how Fincher mocks at us! Brilliantly acted by Rosamund Pike with an able support from Ben Affleck and rest of the cast, it is a must watch. I loved it. And the ending was perfect. Any other ending would have just spoiled the whole movie for me. For me, the blood stained Rosamund Pike in the arms of Ben Affleck with Affleck whispering 'bitch' in her ears while the crowd applauds true love will remain the most iconic 'romantic' scene ever. That scene in itself is an antithesis to all those stories of soul mates and happily ever afters- a necessary antidote to our misplaced modern love!