My Film of the Week

GONE GIRL

Gillian Flynn's third novel about a wife gone missing burrowed into the subconscious of every couple that read it. This was a tale of danger and deceit living under the covers of a supposed loving and magnanimous marriage. Flynn's novel went on to sell over 6 million copies world wide, and it captured the attention of Reese Witherspoon, who bought the rights to turn Gone Girl's pages into images.

David Fincher, the man behind Seven and Zodiac, who is a seasoned professional in transcending nightmarish realities to screen, was the palpable candidate to find Gone Girl's cinematic potential. With Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in place to play Nick and Amy Dunne (the perfect couple), Gone Girl was ready to go.

Nick comes home on his fifth wedding anniversary to find a table smashed in the living room, glass on the floor and blood on the wall. His wife Amy is nowhere to seen, or found. Nick, obviously a stoic man even at the worst of times, draws suspicion from the police and media alike due to his considerable lack of emotion or expression (Affleck plays this down to a tee). With Nick now a prime suspect, as more layers of lies are peeled away, and as we see flashbacks of Amazing Amy's alarming diary entries, the male protagonist begins to suspect he is being set-up by an unlikely source. A shocking mid-film twist blows the case wide open, but does it prove Nick Dunne is innocent?

Gone Girl reminded me of the 1955 feature that inspired Psycho, Les Diaboliques, with its twisty narrative and unforgiving denouement. Talking of Psycho, the film is also an ode to Hitchcock and De Palma with its missing-person theme and a hard line of suspense running through it. Quite like Hitchcock, Fincher placates the dark hysteria of his film's subject matter with close-to-the-bone humour. The sanctity of marriage, along with Amy, goes missing, and this is something that Flynn injected into her screenplay, insofar that she is satirising that ever so blissful ideology. There is something quite false about the performances and the dialogue, and certain viewers might misconstrue this as bad and unnatural. I assure you that this is not the case; Fincher, Flynn and their cohorts are deriding the perfect marriage, and what we hear and see on screen is authenticating this, thus making the performances and dialogue all the more sinister.

This was a stroll in the park for such an accomplished director. Yet, the film itself is an accomplishment. Rosamund Pike in particular, deserves high praise and perhaps an Oscar nomination for such brave and hypnotic work. A final mention has to go to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's score, which contains ongoing compositions of light, ethereal music (sometimes saccharine), and an anxious, radio-static noise, akin to Ligeti's Lux Aerterna. The jumping score from upbeat to negative makes for a compelling companion to the images we focus on.

I would see Gone Girl whilst you can, before it goes missing from the cinemas.