David Fincher is one of the last great directors of adult films.
Not those kinds of ‘adult films.’
Gone are the days of films like The Godfather, adult dramas that were produced by
studios with a decent budget to match. Nowadays if you pitch an ‘adult drama’ to the
studios it better have guns, explosions, car chases and big f*ck-off robots beating the
sh*t out of each other if you want to get a big budget, otherwise you’re relegated to
‘indie-adult-drama.’
The guy who brought us Zodiac, The Social Network and the U.S. version of The Girl
With The Dragon Tattoo (yes I know he made Se7en and Fight Club) still makes quality
adult dramas with a solid budget, and Gone Girl is no different. Based on the 2012
bestseller, the film stars Ben Affleck as a bar owner whose wife goes missing, and as
the film progresses he is put under severe scrutiny by the public, the police and the
media over his involvement in the case. Telling you anymore would be spoiling things.
The narrative is non-linear at the start and this has been done deliberately to cleverly
reveal things to us as the audience. As the film moves along you begin questioning
which characters to side with and sometimes whose story is more believable. The film
shifts focus between characters throughout the runtime and helps to keep the film
engaging but most importantly keeps you on your toes.
As the lead, Ben Affleck has gone from strength to strength over the last few years: as
an actor he’s chosen wiser roles, as a director he’s just getting better with each film, and
as a person he’s learnt to manage the media and his personal image. So the casting of
Affleck as Nick Dunne seems so right for this stage of his life, sans the missing or dead
wife of course. When the end credits roll you’ll realise that this film is just what Affleck
needed in the lead up to his role as the new incarnation of the Dark Knight. However,
the real star of this film, sorry Batfleck fans, is former Bond girl Rosamund Pike. She is
just amazing as she morphs within her character over and over again that is almost
impossible to keep track of who she really is - and it’s more than just a physical
transformation, you have to do a double-take sometimes to realise that it’s still the same
character.
Like any Fincher film, it is beautifully shot with so much attention to detail with regards to
set dressing, the lighting and camera work. This meticulous attention to detail is so
thorough that the pay-off just draws you into the film even more so. And like any David
Fincher film, it is dark, sometimes so dark it borders on pitch-black, but it is also funny,
darkly darkly funny.
Four and a half out of five non-linear stars.
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