Absurd story yet the underlying themes of marriage disillusionment are very real and the characters are complex, flawed and fascinating.

Rating: 7/10 (10 December 2014)

Gone Girl is not quite the film that I expected it to be. Having not read the book, my predictions were based solely on the films trailer which gives us an awful lot of information and had led me to expect an investigation into marital difficulties following a wife's disappearance. That's what it is for the first hour but it changes gear after that and becomes something else entirely which will come to no surprise to those who have read the book.
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) arrives home to find evidence of a possible struggle in his home and his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) missing. Over the days following Amy's disappearance we learn through Nick's reaction and behavior that he was totally unhappy in his marriage and this leads to the police and perhaps even more importantly the media, beginning to suspect him.
The Police are represented through likable yet hard-nosed Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens). Nick is accompanied by Boney as he tracks the various anniversary gift clues left to him by Amy, which is a tradition she performs each year. Things begin to spiral from there in the best tradition of a thriller novel. To divulge much more would be to sabotage the plot. Let's just say that when writing this piece, trying to navigate through egg shells of plot spoilers I was reminded very much of the warnings that accompanied films such as Hitchcock's Psycho and Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques. Before the end credits rolled, early audiences were encouraged not to reveal the plot twists to their friends. If this wasn't already a hugely successful bestselling novel, a similar warning would have been apt.
The story is ridiculous yet Gone Girl is a thoroughly enjoyable film that I would look forward to seeing again. The plot may be absurd yet the underlying themes of marriage disillusionment are very real and the characters are complex, flawed and fascinating.
Ben Affleck fits into the character of Nick Dunne like a glove. Everything about his body language is languid and fed up. He stands on his lawn, hands dangling by his side, big deep breath, contemplating the darkness of his situation. Nick Dunne isn't a good guy or a bad guy. He's a normal decent guy with some serious flaws, like most of us. And it's this that makes his character interesting and Affleck's performance so compelling. He's more than just the every Joe though. Look out for the emotional depths he must reach when he's told things that shock him about his wife. It's a mixture of feigning anger and disguising the secrets of his marriage as well as genuine shock at times. It's a wonderful performance.
Rosamund Pike as Amy Dunne is an equal yet all together different performance. Amy is intense, intelligent, manipulative and maniacal and Pike plays her full throttle with some of her more severe scenes bringing to mind Heath Ledgers memorable turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight. We don't get to know Amy as quickly as we get to know Nick, so to speak about her performance in much more depth would be to begin to give plot elements away.
Both Pike and Affleck are shored up by an excellent supporting cast. As mentioned Kim Dickens as Detective Boney plays that wonderful kind of detective that seems to almost charm her suspect into guilt. Carrie Coon as Nick's rock of a sister Margo is a completely down to earth, believable character and their brother/Sister relationship comes across naturally. Tyler Perry brings some timely humor as a lawyer in the final third of the film and the supporting cast is complete with Neil Patrick Harris as a rich mama's boy and a high quality creep.
In many aspects Gone Girl holds similarities with David Fincher's previous film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Both are adoptions of best-selling books. Both are plot dominated thrillers. It has been said that both could be classed as adoptions of 'Airport' novels, an airport novel being a fairly long, fast paced thriller/adventure meant to eat up the hours of sitting and waiting. In other words, a book you read to fill empty hours, rather than a book you'd seek out to read. Perhaps the two are not mutually exclusive but it offers an interesting look toward the direction Fincher, one of the most important filmmakers of the last two decades, is heading and whether it's the right direction or not. Zodiac, Fincher's finest film to date could never be accused of being an airport novel.
That said, Gone Girl is a thoroughly enjoyable film, one I'd watch again, a film with characters that we want to know more about and a plot to keep you glued to your chair. It is of course absurd and ridiculous like any good airport novel. But if you focus instead on the wonderful characters and their navigation through this whirlwind plot, you'll find Gone Girl to be another solid Fincher film even it does fall short of being placed alongside his absolute finest.