GONE GIRL REVIEW

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.

I read Gone Girl when I was going through this huge thriller kick one summer - inhaling all the Thomas Harris and James Patterson I could find, and completely wrecking my attention span in the process - and for a few heady days, it was all I could think about. The prose is beautiful, just lyrical enough, and there was nothing lazy in the machinations of its plot. However, if I could go back, I would have refrained from reading the little review quotes on the first few pages of my copy. They were all talking about the HUGE TWIST. I was constantly alert for this HUGE TWIST, and felt like I was David Tennant in Broadchurch, hired specifically to unspool the thread of this dark incident - to figure out the twist before it was revealed. When the HUGE TWIST came, I was just like, oh. There it is. I was mainly relieved. 

The HUGE TWIST is that Nick Dunne didn't callously murder his "New York wife", Amy; she removed herself, to teach him a lesson. We learn this halfway through the book and film. In a clumsier author's hands, this would just be rude, frankly - a cruel "it was all just a dream" tactic, for shock and not much else. The first chapter where Amy reveals her plans is one of my favourite things, not least for the "cool girl" rant that helps wash away the bitter aftertaste of Nick's casual misogyny. I was so interested to see how they handled the twist in the film, because in the book it's easier to move from narrator to narrator, our narrow focus tilted this way and that by the warring parties. 

The first half of the film, pre-twist, follows the book closely. One of the things I was most excited about was to see how Fincher captured suburbia, and he didn't disappoint: his shots all looked like something from Arcade Fire's The Suburbs album booklet, all angles, with clear, crisp colours and liquidy lighting. If The Social Network was a wash of yellow, Gone Girl is pale, soft blue, the shade of sky and lake. We follow Ben Affleck as Nick, who remains peculiarly unaffected by his wife's disappearance, moving through this landscape with the broad confidence of the popular guy in high school. Affleck is so, so good as Nick - I didn't particularly like his character in the book, but something about seeing his inappropriate grins and ridiculous remarks play out in front of you makes it hard not to like him. The whole cinema was laughing at him in a sort of fond way every time he said anything. 

One thing that really perked up this former half of the film was the supporting cast. Margo was a character who I did love in the book, but on screen she's even better: a funny, realistic female character I'd like to see Fincher tackle more often in his work. By contrast, the two cops who tail the suspicious Nick around town are less the procedural drones from the book, more a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern double act. Kim Dickens as Rhonda Boney glows. I'm glad Flynn's script elevated these two while still maintaining their veneer of competency.

And now - HUGE TWIST. We've had the sugar-coated flashbacks that detail the descent of Nick and Amy's relationship, and now we're in a car with Rosamund Pike, gleefully escaping Carthage. We're excited! This is kind of thrilling! And then, oh, okay. The "cool girl" speech, which (maybe naively) I read as a kind of screw-you to the impossibility of a real woman squashing herself into this too-small bracket of male desirability, was delivered in voiceover as Amy drove past various women in cars. And these were just women doing whatever - singing along to the radio, or chatting with friends. Amy saw these women - even though they were either alone, or with female friends - as pretending, for the sake of a man. 

Here's where I noticed the biggest deviation from the book: Amy's reason for escape. In the novel, Amy leaves because, she says, she decided to show Nick her "true self" (a little sociopathic, a little strange) and when she removed her "cool girl" facade, she discovered Nick no longer loved her. In the film, Amy makes it explicit that her reason for leaving is because, instead, Nick is no longer the same. She makes no mention of any discrepancy in her own behaviour from the start to the current point of their marriage. I don't know why this change was made, and it made it a bit harder for me to see why she left in such a dramatic fashion (we kind of need the context of knowing Amy is not as she pretended to be). It obviously still worked, and I know it's inappropriate to obsess over novel/film differences, but it gave the story a very different feel.

Anyway: Pike as Amy is marvellous, this icy person who also manages to be incredibly adorable (her little leprechaun high-kicks!). The play of humanity and inhumanity in Pike's performance is wonderful, a contrast to Affleck's down-to-earth bar owner. I've never heard a cinema audience react so audibly to events as when Amy murdered Neil Patrick Harris' character and showed up, covered in blood like Carrie, at the Dunne marital home. Someone behind me said "WHAT THE FUUUUCK," very loudly; everyone was gasping and laughing and generally getting a bit pantomime. 

Other things: the soundtrack! I listen to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' The Social Network soundtrack an awful lot, and their music for Gone Girl was incredible. It flows into every scene. Also - there was a lot of unexpected humour. I don't really know why there was so many obviously comical flourishes added; perhaps to poke fun, a little, at the heightened nature of the plot? 

Gone Girl felt like a very controlled, intelligently-made film. It was fun and dark and sometimes a bit silly. I loved it.