Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
distinguished cinephiles and serious adult drama moviegoers, fall is here! My favorite time of year of for great cinema is here. The time when a truly great film rises to the SUMMIT. The Master, 12 years a Slave, and now drum roll please. I can't stand it when Stephanie Zacharek from the L.A. Weekly calls Fincher's latest work "too slick." She reminds me of one of those people at a concert that just stands and refuses to dance because she is too cool. Last year it was the issue that 12 years a Slave was too image based. McQueen and Fincher are heavyweight directors and she has no idea what she is talking about.
On to the film of the year. Gone Girl seems to be Fincher's most accessible film in years. I was not a huge fan of the Social Network and I thoroughly enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and I loved Zodiac. Gone Girl is a fusion, of Zodiac, Seven, and House of Cards. The relationship between Amazing Amy/ Amy Elliot Dunne,/ Rosamund Pike, and Nick Dunne/ Ben Affleck has all of the components of Francis Underwood/ Kevin Spacey, and Claire Underwood/ Robin Wright. However, this husband and wife dynamic is quite different than House of Cards, yet similarly in Gone Girl when both couples are behind closed doors as a viewer you feel you are truly peering into their private lives.
Nick Dunne is the average man that to quote Fincher, "His nuts are in a vice the whole time." Ironically his twin sister Go has a t-shirt with a squirrel carrying a bat and protecting acorns appearing at the beginning of the movie at the bar that reads "protect your nuts." The film has the Hitchcock sense of Roger Thornhill being chased by a crop duster and his life simultaneously falling apart. Nick Dunne is played by Ben Affleck. Affleck does an incredible job at making the viewer feel that his entire life is coming undone.
The use of flashbacks in the film was some of the best I have ever seen. The musical accompaniment of the flashbacks by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross create a surreal dream world. Rosamund Pike will be nominated for best actress for an oscar. She appears for the first half of the movie via flashback as a ghost and she is truly amazing. She says so much with her eyes and her expressions without verbalizing anything. She haunts the first half of the film like a ghost. When I first heard about the adaptation of my favorite modern book in the last five years I thought no one could portray the essence of Amy. Rosamund Pike has done just that. Most will argue that the character is just crazy, but there are many more layers to the cake than meets the eye.
The film is essentially about marriage. Kudos to Gillian Flynn she is the best modern writer I have read in the last five years. The way Flynn as a writer chose to break the chapters from a female and male perspective was astounding. She was like a detective herself in the amount of research and time she spent in getting help from the St. Louis Police department and others. As a reader you could tell she gave it her all. I honestly thought not even Fincher could scratch the surface of the book. However, Gillian Flynn wrote the screenplay. She had to cut hundreds of pages and distill so much information, but the transfer was there. At 2:45 minutes the movie feels like Argo in terms of pace. Flynn writes in a way that makes you understand why a marriage is disintegrating in a very short period of time and how great it once was in flashbacks. The flashbacks of the matching bed sheets at the Chinese restaurant, the sugar kiss, and the bar affair kiss, as well as the murder scene and internal dialogue were my favorite parts of the film.
People will latch on to media and celebrity culture, but that has nothing to do with movie. Get it while it's hot off the grill. The film of the year and winner of best picture! Cheers to France and Russia thanx for the hits!!!
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