Gone Girl
Dir: David Fincher
2014
*****
If I had a penny for every time I saw someone reading Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl on the way to or from work over the last few years, I'd be a wealthy man. I make a point of not reading books with 'Best Seller' on the cover, not because I think I'm better than everyone else, I just feel sorry for all the books that don't. That and the fact that every contemporary 'Best Seller' I've read has been a total disappointment. I have however, broken my own rule of not watching a film before reading the book and after watching this adaptation, I'm really regretting it. It is an astonishing film and one of the creepiest I've seen for quite some time. It's been classed as a domestic noir, a rather dubious sounding sub-genre, especially when the story is about so much more than just a married couple. Gone Girl is really about the moral bankruptcy of society, the Girl of the title being 'gone' in more ways than one. It plays out like a classic crime thriller, a good old fashioned mystery, and it is the best of the genre for quite some time, the real success however is that everyone is guilty. It's a sad story whereby everyone is to blame one way or another (or is at least at fault) but there isn't really any reflection or conclusion. This is what I feel is the real success of the story. A crime noir about societies wrongs, David Fincher really was the only choice of director and he has constructed the perfect film. The performances are very strong, Ben Affleck gets better as he gets older and is brilliant as the husband, and I've never been much of a fan of Rosamund Pike but her portrayal of Amy Dunne is destined to be remembered as a classic. There is so much more going on than first meets the eye, the idea is so clever and terrifyingly real, you could be forgiven for thinking it was a horror. It accentuates every element that makes a thriller great and adds a new element into film that we haven't seen for a while, maybe not since 60's France. The new new wave? I certainly hope so.