thelittledoorreview.com

Rating: 8/10 (13 October 2014)

Review of the film Gone Girl The film adaptation of Gillian Flynn's best-selling novel Gone Girl comes across the screen with an eerie stillness that elevates from the very first moment where Nick Dunne, played adeptly by Ben Affleck, stands at the curb of his suburban home taking in the silent Missouri morning. It is an unforgettable beginning, one that comes to mind abruptly late in the film when the chaos has come full circle, and Nick is standing at the exact same spot in the early morning, except this time the curb is lined with television trucks.
Gone Girl is more than just your typical murder mystery. At its heart is the concerns of relationships, specifically marriages, and the way in which people tend to eat away at one another, trying to devour the significant other with questions that seem to load the burden of reciprocity: What are you thinking, Amy? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do? The questions not only imply the insecurities of relationships, the need to discover in someone else what you can't seem to find in yourself, but they foreshadow the major themes of the movie as well: the inability to truly know someone or to convey yourself to somebody else, the inevitable burdening of apprehensions onto the significant other, and the hope that a significant other can alleviate the itinerant loneliness that comes with life. The central conflict is a nail-biting spin-off of how far people are willing to go to make the person you once loved suffer mixed with how far are you willing to go to make it last.
On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary Amy Dunne goes missing, and the actions of Nick Dunne call into question his relationship with his wife, making him the obvious suspect. He is seen smiling in photos, his features are smug and somewhat emotionless, except to reveal the occasional self-awareness that he is good looking, a sweet heart in the heartland, and he does not seem to be overly concerned with his wife's absence, as if he believes it is some big hoax, his wife just trashed the living room and took off.
The film oscillates between "the day of" Amy's disappearance as it progresses forward, to the earlier stages of their relationship, where you begin to realize they were a hopelessly doomed couple, artistic and witty, both writers in New York, both young and beautiful, idealistic, she wealthy from the trust her parents established publishing Amazing Amy children's books based on her when she was a child. What you will notice in the film is how the family dynamic is prominent throughout. The focus on Amy's resentment of her parents, creating an alter-ego of their daughter that excelled where she failed, despite the privilege and status it provided her as an adult, a privilege she recognizes and loathes at the same time. And Nick, whose twin sister Go lives in North Carthage, the suburban town they grew up in, where Nick thoughtlessly brings Amy to live when they both find themselves unemployed at the same time his now deceased mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. That, and their father who they abjectly placed in a nursing home, visiting once a year, an apathy developed out of disgust for the way he raised them. Amy and Nick seem to have deep seated family issues at the core of their unhappy marriage, addressing the question of whether or not our inability to have rich and healthy relationships in America is not a product of having not many great examples of them. The point is that you could spend all day picking apart this movie, debating what it's about, analyzing its motifs and symbols, or simply admiring it. Because it is powerfully wrought, thoughtfully designed, and the translation from novel to film is one of the best in years.
Gone Girl is a shocker, full of twists and turns that move at a gradual, yet surprising pace. The movie is about two and half hours long, but you won't find yourself drifting off, no, you'll find yourself entranced, unable to pull away from either Nick or Amy or Go or Tanner Bolt, Nick high profile lawyer, for that matter. All of the characters are played thoughtfully, with the exception of Desi Collins, play by Neil Patrick Harris, who seemed out of place amongst the seriousness of the film, or maybe it is just too harsh a contrast from seeing him as Barney in How I Met Your Mother. Still, this is easily one of the best films of the year, packed with surprises that shake off your expectations in the most exhilarating way. Well written, directed, filmed, and acted, an all-around pleaser that will leave you with an eerie stillness that follows you, like Nick standing at the curb of his suburban home, out to the car as you try to digest what exactly it is you have just witnessed.