Gone Girl - Gone Nuts!

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2014)

Ever since the credits started rolling last night after GONE GIRL, my mind couldn't stop thinking about the film. Not just about how great it is and what an amazing job Fincher has done, because what Fincher has actually done is beyond amazing. It's radical, it's sublime and it's powerful. By the way, I am not just talking about the film.
Back in 2006, M Night Shyamalan was super hot, just like Fincher is today. With that said his 2006 film "Lady In The Water" was a miss. Not because the movie was bad, it was actually pretty awful, but rather because he was too blunt about making a movie as bad as that. The plot was ridiculous, spewing mockery of pretty much everything the studio system has been looking to make – the monsters, the unbelievable plot lines that were supposed to be buried behind major visual effects and set pieces shots. You watched "Lady In The Water" and were thinking "WTF IS THIS" every five minutes, one minute at time. And then you probably walked out. Or stayed, because just like Howard Stern would do it, Shyamalan would keep your hopes up while you sat thru the muck and waited for that amazing twist or a plot line to reveal itself.
But wait a second. Why am I talking about Shyamalan and "Lady In The Water"? 2 years ago, David Fincher took upon himself to re-create "Girl With A Dragon Tattoo" remake, as we know it. We also know that people didn't respond to it too well. Despite the fact the series has been extremely popular in the US, it still felt that the market has been over-saturated with hard covers and paperbacks of the book as well as DVDs of the Millennium Trilogy all around the country. Arguably, every library has been selling off it's excess copies of those books and you could find them virtually in every thrift store for 50 cents a piece.
Fincher knew what he was doing. He knew he had a super famous book on hand, a book that was probably even more so famous because of the EU films. And yet, he took it upon himself to make the film. Don't you think for a second that there wasn't a pile of scripts every studio in town would have killed for Fincher to direct for them. He wanted to direct "Girl". And he has. And not too many cared. And it probably affected him in more ways than one.
"Gone Girl", to me, is Fincher's brilliantly masked "Lady In The Water". It's a movie that was created to f*ck with your head, senses, morale, the language of film you thought you understood and overall commentary of the pop culture and the shape it's in today. I am only guessing, but the wizardry of "f*ck you" in "Gone Girl" is astounding just as it is mind boggling.
Stanley Kubrick's life has been in danger after making "Clockwork Orange" and why? Because he caused you  manipulated you  made you relate to and sympathize with a sociopath in that film. He made you feel bad for him, he pretty much manipulated an emotion out of you that simply resembles what (and pardon my political parallel) the media is trying to evoke in you when they talk about Hammas and the Gaza strip, by showing you crying women instead of crazy radicals who are killing themselves on camera. Fincher basically held nothing back. He introduced a whole new level of "f*cked up" masking it as "the new norm". And how can you blame him? Which were the most popular books-turned-movies of late? And I mean, MEGA successful franchise type books-turned-movies? "The Hunger Games" is one. A futuristic utopia where children must kill each other. "50 Shades Of Grey", a whole new level of ungodly trashosphere about love parading as BDSM and then you had  "Gone Girl". In other words, if you want to write a book and ensure it's a huge bestseller, make sure it revolves around hyper reality of blood. Whatever it is. Cut people, rape people, tie people. Seems like it will hit. And that is why Fincher parades "Gone Girl" as "just a close and loyal adaptation of the book". But then he makes you laugh where it isn't really funny. He shoots intense scenes and makes you laugh. He f*cks with your cinematic sensibility and makes you laugh when you should be crying. And he does it so well that it can make you sick and you wont know why.
I thought Fincher wanted to expose more than just a social commentary on extraordinary power of the news and media overall and how the smallest of stories can be turned into an unprecedented sensation. I simply think that Fincher, hurt and bothered after being pretty much rejected by the masses for doing "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", decided to give birth to another "Girl", so f*cked up and yet so perfectly so that no matter what crime he were to commit on screen, and how dark it were to be, he would know that the audience would eat it up it even more-so. And that is probably more disturbing than the film itself. And something tells me Fincher's intent has been achieved that way.
David Fincher has proved himself to be the utmost talented and arguably "perfect" director. He can do whatever he wants with hundreds of millions of people as long as they fall under the spell of his films in film theaters, living rooms and bedrooms around the globe. But something also tells me that he got really mad. And that he couldn't take it anymore. And then he made "Gone Girl". And I won't be surprised if it's success will hunt Fincher for years to come.