Riding Through The Dark

One thing that is intersting about film-makers is that the more they direct, the more they can express themselves in the smallest detail, whether it’s within the scenes themselves, or with the characters that we, as the viewer, have to see and engage with. Naturally, the norm when looking upon these ‘auteurs’, is how we distinguish them from each other; how independently, every director has their own stylistic choices and what the purpose of these cinematic aspects, that these ‘artists’ employ, convey. While it can be understandable that watching a scene involving two people talking to one-another in a room is the least cinematic thing to watch and witness, it is scenes like this that can unlock certain emotions and pieces of information that a character has. This is a necessity that David Fincher, responsible for making such films like Fight Club and Zodiac, likes to manipulate with, He’s a film-maker that very much moulds exposition; giving characters a new piece of information that leads them down an emotional/psychological rabbit hole. This goes in accordance with Fincher’s 2014 award-nominated film Gone Girl, a filmic piece that meshes this narrative trope of Fincher’s, and the technical aspects of the static camera which effortlessly captures detail in the finest of margins. 

Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), a small town idyllic guy who profited as a magazine writer in New York City, blames the recession and the loss of his job for the decline of his marriage. Questions of his motives and of his character soon begin to arise as Nick’s wife, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), mysteriously disappears on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. As the search for his missing wife subsequently plays out over the ensuing days, guilty suspicions from the police/investigators are fuelled into a national frenzy by the media as Nick is suspected of killing his wife. As the story intersects between the mystery of Nick Dunne’s wife’s disappearance and a diary entry, written and narrated over by Amy, is this picturesque, every-man capable of murdering his wife? or is there something else that is hidden within this contemporary/exploitation tale?…

Like with many of his previous films, the cinematic aspect that Fincher utilises in a subtle yet effective way, is the implementation of the camera and how it very much stays in a static position; making us see everything and every detail in one singular frame. Most often then not with a film directed by Fincher, undoubtedly, you’re going to be watching a film that is thriller-driven is set up to be a film that feels like a jigsaw piece. They’re films that, as an audience member, you’re constantly trying to piece together the thriller/crime intricacies of the story. This is done predestine in Gone Girl to the extent where the film feels like a crime case. For sure, contextually the film does turn into a rather sombre crime/investigation flick with the fact that throughout the first half up-to the half-way point in this film, you do get this inkling that Ben Affleck’s character is rather shady and did in fact ‘murder’ his own wife. But one of the ways in which Gone Girl sets itself to be a rather good thriller is the use of the camera. Nearly every frame and every setting has a consistency of paying good attention to detail. There is always a clue or a little red herring towards the plot of the story, making Gone Girl one of the better thrillers to watch. There isn’t a lot of thrillers that attract the audience through the use of the camera and instead rely upon one singular exposition scene which explains the outcome of the plot. Gone Girl doesn’t do this. It simply relies upon good-camera work throughout to leaves hooked to the story. The scenes/set-ups themselves resemble an investigation case. It’s very much a forensic approach to film-making; everything in every shot and frame has been put their on purpose which makes you analyse the smallest details of the Dunne’s house or the flashback sequences which leave little tid-bits of information. I think the fact that there isn’t any hand-held movement of the camera as well, complements this feeling that we’re just viewing the nature of the film and viewing the events that unfold in a rather dark-manner.

The other thing that I appreciate David Fincher and the scriptwriter, Gillian Flynn, who originally wrote the 2012 novel of the same name, was the way in which the narrative was told, with the timeline moving back and forth essentially giving us the different perspectives of the characters, and how it kept a consistent grip of being gripping and subtly tense through the running time. I think for any thriller/suspense film to be engaging like Gone Girl is, it definitely has to have a clever contextual gimmick to the story-telling; a narrative device that potentially lets us see different perspectives and emotions of the various characters involved. Gone Girl does this with ease, particularly from the start to the half-way point of the film where on one hand we have the ordinary timeline of husband Nick coming home to a wrecked scene finding that his wife, Amy, is missing which essentially casts a cloud of doubt on Nick on whether he has something to do with this disappearance. Meanwhile, in short sequences interjecting with the main timeline, we have monologue snippets of Amy writing/talking of past experiences with Nick which is subsequently followed up with a flashback of a circumstance that involves Nick and Amy and how their marriage, over-time, changed. So basically, what we have two-time frames going on through the running time at the same instance and what that does, is that it allows us to see two versions of the story; one being told in the present and once accounting the past revealing the truths and clues to the main plot-line. Even though it does go back-and-forth between the timeline, it strangely has a nice flow and adds to what I was saying about this film being engaging and not ever being boring. It’s the juxtaposition of finding out the tid-bits of the diary entries and then cutting to the main timeline which helps this as every instance, you’re learning a bit more about the mystery between Nick and Amy and how this marriage starts and ‘ends’. What I liked more however is how the consensus of the story changes. While it starts off as this murder mystery that consistently reveals little details of Nick and Amy’s past through those flashback sequences, without spoiling anything, it does slowly and subtly turn into a tale of exploitation/absurdness drama that coalesces towards the power of  journalism and the media, very much similar to that of Nightcrawler, a film that was released the same year as this one. Very much so then, Gone Girl is a Fincher film that borrows elements from his previous works; borrowing the forensic/investigation contextual elements from Zodiac and combining that with the drama motifs found in The Social Network.

It’s already clear from the talking points of the static camera and the narrative that Gone Girl succeeds over many lacklustre thriller which don’t live up to the expectation of providing good story-telling and suspense. But I think it would be criminal, if I didn’t go ahead and mention the characterisation and performances that also contributed to this films re-watch-ability, along with the camera techniques and the narrative. As Nick Dunne, Affleck gives us his most human and realised performance that shows just how much this actor can be with a good director at the helm. However, the performance of the film has to go to Rosamund Pike as the complicated wife, Amy Dunne, which rightfully so, netted Pike an award-nomination for her performance. Again, not to spoil anything of the major factors of the story, but the ‘transformation’ we see of Pike’s performance is excellent yet disturbing to witness. Even within the first frames of the film, where we see Pike’s character lying on the character of Nick looking at the lens of the camera, will give you that unsettled, uneasiness that this film overall gives off. On one level, she does echo that psychological ‘tick’ that you see within Norman Bates in Psycho; it’s not evident straight away that she’s a character that possesses this manic side that gets her out of tricky situations, especially near the end of the film (sorry for spoilers!!). With plenty turns and twists, Gone Girl keeps you, not only second guessing the spiralling down of the marriage we are presented, but keeps us guessing about the characters, since every individual has their own agenda; they all have their parts to play. A good example of this would be the Amy character, since she has this depth of a woman who was idolised and had much attention towards her due to the fact that she was known as the fictional character, the ‘Amazing Amy’, which her mum wrote and based it on her own daughter in Amy. She’s very much the catalyst to what we see and turns the cogs of the story into a film that is always offering something new.

Under the direction of Fincher, Gone Girl offers up a dark and brooding thriller/drama that consistently offers up intriguing contextual red herrings and story motifs that keeps us glued to our seats. It is indeed a Fincher film, with static camera work that outlines every ounce of detail that is conjured up on the screen. But with a nice shifting of narrative styles and a melancholy musical score, Gone Girl is a good example of what a thriller should be. With a running time of just under 2 hours and 30 minutes, Fincher does exceptionally well in keeping us engaged with the film, which rarely happens in a lot of thriller films these days…

And on that note, it’s time for to end. As always everyone, thank you for reading my latest film and I hope you’ve enjoyed the read. If any of you actually have watched the film and have an opinion on the film or on what I have said in this review, please feel free to drop a comment down below. I will be back next week with the start of a new film review series with the compendium of Harry Potter franchise of films. That’s right, I’ll be reviewing firstly The Philosopher’s Stone and then the rest of the Harry Potter films in the coming weeks/months. Until that review next week, thank you once again and have a good day! Take care! :0

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ – Alex Rabbitte