Christian’s Grade: A
I love David Fincher movies. Seven (1995), Fight Club (1999), and The Social Network (2010) are some of my favorites from his filmography. Even the ones that don’t quite hit those standards, like The Game (1997) and Alien 3 (1992), are better than most of the big-budget movies advertised on TV every 15 minutes that studios are begging us to watch.
But because I’ve read and loved the book by Gillian Flynn, I took a special interest in Gone Girl (2014). It’s a complex story, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy to adapt as a screenplay (also written by Flynn). But the final result was a stunning up-close view of a marriage through the dual lenses of a psychopath, bent on manifesting an outwardly perfect life, and a man who thought he wanted that too, only to realize he never really knew his wife at all.
The story follows Nick & Amy Dunne, played by Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike. They seem to be the perfect couple until the guts of their relationship slowly become exposed and examined on the day of their 5th wedding anniversary when Amy disappears. Nick calls the police when he comes home to find signs of a violent struggle. He’s concerned for his wife and wants to be helpful. But as the police question Nick, they find that while he has clear answers for where he was and what he was doing, he doesn’t seem to know much about how Amy spent her days or who her friends are. Even personal details about Amy that seem pretty common elude Nick under questioning, leading detectives to suspect their marriage might not be as solid as it appeared.
As the investigation progresses, evidence begins to contradict Nick’s story, and the focus on him becomes more intense. An affair is discovered between Nick and a much younger woman. A motive for Nick to kill his wife takes shape. Without a body, detectives are reluctant to arrest him. But in the court of public opinion, Nick finds he’s been found guilty by more and more people every day.
The other half of the story follows Amy secretly leaving town, having framed Nick for her murder. As the movie’s quasi-narrator, she lays out her plan step by step, beginning with her discovery of the affair. From that point on, she dedicated her life to laying the groundwork for her eventual disappearance and making sure all signs pointed to Nick.
Amy plants a diary making him out to be increasingly selfish and abusive. She creates evidence indicating she was pregnant. She makes friends with wives in the neighborhood and lies to them about her husband. Amy even intended to eventually drown herself in the ocean so that the final piece of evidence, her body, will seal his fate. But a chance meeting with a couple of lowlifes derails her plans forcing her to con a former obsessive boyfriend into helping her get back on her feet.
She follows the news on her case and sees her plan unfolding. Through the guise of an anniversary treasure hunt, Amy left clues for Nick to find. Clues that cryptically tell him what she has done and let Nick know she knew his secrets. Realizing Amy is alive, Nick takes a chance and agrees to an interview that will expose his mistakes. It will also give him the chance to publicly repent and convince the world that while he is a cheater, he’s not a murderer. But will Nick be able to reach Amy, wherever she is, and convince her to come back? Not to fix their rocky marriage but to save his life.
Amy sees the interview and is convinced Nick can be salvaged as a husband and be transformed back into the man she fell for. She knows that interview was a message meant for her. So, she works on a new plan to frame her ex-boyfriend as a kidnapper and rapist. She kills him and returns to Nick, covered in blood, in full view of the news cameras. She tells police of the kidnapping ordeal and sets herself up as a hero.
Nick, now off the hook for murder, tells Amy he wants a divorce. But after all, she’s been through, she’s not about to let him off that easy.
Fans of Fincher’s work will recognize his signature all over this film. When things start off pretty grim and become more and more dire, it’s to be expected. Fincher’s movies run long, and one thing they do particularly well is build characters (which the book was exceptional at too). Looking back at this film, the message of this story is that the face we present for public view doesn’t show who we really are. It often hides it. A statement more relevant now than ever before.
This is the torture Nick suffers throughout the story. He has a deep need to be liked, and as his life unravels and secrets are exposed, that need becomes a noose around his neck. Every picture Nick’s in is publicly judged, every facial expression analyzed for intent. His relationships play a big part in explaining how he reacts under pressure. Nick knows how he should present himself, but his conflicting feelings about Amy and concern over her safety, mixed with his own paranoia about how everyone interprets his every action, makes him second-guess all his choices.
There was an aspect of Nick’s story that was only hinted at but added an interesting layer to his psychological architecture. His relationship with his father and how dysfunctional his upbringing was. This need to be seen as different, better than his father, only highlights his failure as a husband by having an affair and resenting his wife. We see this cycle play out in real life all the time. As hard as we try to differentiate ourselves from our parents, it only serves to show how similar we end up becoming.
On the flip side, Amy’s psychology is equally complex but from the opposite direction. Her parents never split and were very involved in her life. They also used their daughter as a muse for a series of children’s books called “Amazing Amy.” Similar to what so many parents do with social media, Amy’s parents documented, curated, and dramatized every aspect of her life. Then they published it to make money, and as the book’s popularity grew, Amy was forced to present an idealized version of herself to the public that wasn’t accurate to her actual life. And rather than asking their daughter how she felt about being in that spotlight, they placated her with money.
So, it makes sense that Amy had a history of forcing the men in her life to fit into a mold of perfection that only existed in her head. And when they resisted or refused to participate, Amy ruined their reputations and their lives. As we meet Amy’s exes, it becomes clear that while she projects the image of the perfect girlfriend, she damages the lives she touches, and the men left in her wake are traumatized.
But Amy has seen the ideal Nick, and she believes she can build her perfect life by making him into an ideal husband by force if necessary. Nick was his best self for her. Amy brought that out in him. Now that she’s saved his life, Amy’s determined to have the husband that was promised. She uses Nick’s need for love and approval by revealing that she is pregnant. Nick’s desire to be a better father than his own won’t let him leave now. The thought of his own child hating him the way he hates his father is the chain that binds him to Amy. So, he resigns himself to this façade of a marriage.
The movie was well-paced, and the cast was great. But I have to say, while Ben Affleck, Tyler Perry & Neil Patrick Harris were all solid in their roles, it was Rosamund Pike that stole the show. She was the ideal Amy from the book. Perfect casting. She had a lot of heavy lifting to do in this film, and watching her performance drew me in, and I never doubted that she was Amy for a second. For that, I’m a fan for life.
But another thing to note is that David Fincher, as a filmmaker, does not lean toward stories with the predictable, safe, or satisfactory ending you might enjoy from a Spielberg movie. Fincher leaves you with an ending you have to digest for a while and give it some thought in order to have it sit well with you. Gone Girl is no exception because when it ends, you’ll find that understanding Nick and the decisions he made and how he chooses to live with them puts you in place of the detectives in the story and takes you back through the film a second time to ask Nick the question, why? And while the answer sounds simple, it’s layered in the complexity of a person’s life. Life can be complicated. People can be complicated. Nick’s motivation is one we can all relate to. We all want to be loved, not hated.
In the end, this movie is an examination of something everyone does. We present our best self to strangers to attract someone and make them fall for us. But what if that becomes the expectation? Are we setting those people up for disappointment when they eventually see the real us? The normal us. Will we still be seen as acceptable in the eyes of the ones we tricked when our flaws come out? Is that what love is? Seeing an ideal and then settling for something less? What if the person we duped into loving us insists that we live up to what was advertised? What if they will not accept anything less than our best self? Gone Girl presents these questions and compels its viewers to consider and reevaluate all the relationships in their life, for better or worse.
Great review of a movie I loved a lot, with a few scenes that still stick with me even after seeing it when it first came out. I agree Pike was sensational. It certainly is a film that highlights the fact not everybody sees the “real us.”
Christian did a great job reviewing the film. I haven’t read the source novel, but the big “twist” midway through the film really blew my mind. I think this is one of David Fincher’s most well-crafted films.
Thanks for the comment! If you loved the movie I highly recommend reading the book. It’s a much fuller exploration of the characters with some pretty messed up stuff that wasn’t in the film.