This Generation's Fatal Attraction

Rating: 7/10 (10 April 2015)

Living up to parents' expectations can be tough. Imagine if your parents published a children's book, based on all your accomplishments as a child. Now imagine that all of the accomplishments in the book were better versions of what you had actually done. What a way to find out that everything you did wasn't good enough for them. Being judged by others is just one of the many themes depicted in Gone Girl.
Gone Girl is the film adaptation of the 2012 award winning and best selling novel of the same name, written by Gillian Flynn. When Amy (Rosamund Pike) goes missing, her husband Nick (Ben Affleck) feels the unrelenting gaze of the people around him judging the worth of his marriage, judging his worth as a husband and as a man. Societal pressures on a man to be the provider and the disapproval for women to be successful are some of the subtleties that make Gone Girl so complex and engaging.
This is an ugly story about the decay of a marriage and how other people push their way into our lives, be it disapproving bystanders or talk show hosts shepherding public opinion. The depiction of trial by media in Gone Girl also includes a need for lawyers to engage public relations' strategies with talk show hosts in order for justice to even be possible in a courtroom. It's those kinds of elements that make this psychological thriller a horror story.
Very few films have been able to pull off a non-linear storyline, but when it happens, those films stand out in the crowd. Gone Girl is one of these films. All the actors do a stellar job at revealing emotional layers of their characters, but it's the auteur direction of David Fincher (the man behind Se7en, Fight Club and one of the executive producers of the US adaption of House of Cards) that shapes this film as a whole with the assistance of a musical score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Fincher challenged the pair to create a soundscape that created a soothing façade that put the audience on edge because it was inauthentic, and it's the soundtrack that makes Gone Girl a see-it-in-a-cinema film, where you can be enveloped by the soundtrack in a cinema's high end sound system and in a controlled environment.
As much as I really want to love this film, I cannot ignore that it ultimately depicts misogynistic myths and fantasies relating to rape and domestic violence, and by doing this it validates them. Yes, this film does talk about victim blaming, the scorn women can have for other women that they see as better than them, the scorn society has for women that are victims of abuse at a time when they need support the most, and that (according to the film) the number one killer of pregnant women is domestic violence. But Gone Girl also depicts the myths of rape and domestic violence that frankly do not need any help to be sustained; that women ask for it, that they did something to provoke it, that they deserve it and the ultimate misogynistic fallacy: that women will lie about rape and domestic violence, and that it's men that are the real victims of these accusations.
At just over two and a quarter hours, Gone Girl is just long enough for us to have a two part story, without it being a deep vein thrombosis experience. Just when you think that the film has come to a conclusion and you're left wanting more, Fincher and Flynn unravel the story further to reveal more complexities, consequences and manipulations, right up until the moment that should have you going, "NoReally?  I can't believe they're going there."
Overall, worthwhile female roles in a male-centric narrative, masterful composition, cinematography and direction are all the hallmarks of an excellent cinematic experience and the film is worth seeing for that expertise. Just make sure that you make time to have coffee with men that don't subscribe to these outdated myths, and make a donation to a women's refuge after you're done.