Film- Gone Girl
Director– David Fincher
Based on – Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Year of Release- 2014
Genre- Thriller
Running Time- 149 minutes
Streaming Platforms- Netflix and Amazon Prime Video
What is a “Good Girl” according to you? or society? Well, as everyone would describe, a good girl is one who respects people, loves her partner, listens to her parents, and lives for her family. But David Fincher has some other plans to describe his character, such is what Gone Girl is about. How much can a good girl hold her real personality, her real motives?
Gone Girl stars Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, Neil Patrick Harris in the lead. Along with other actors like Tyler Perry in the supporting roles. And mind you if you haven’t seen any of Rosamund Pikes’s films in your life, you’re throwing yourself to be one of the biggest fans of Pikes.
SYNOPSIS
On the day of his wedding anniversary, Nick (Ben Affleck) discovers that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) has mysteriously disappeared. Lost in lies and strange behavior, he becomes the police’s prime suspect. Now Nick needs to prove his innocence and try to figure out what happened to Amy. The film examines the effects of fraud, media, economy on marriage, and how people perceive each other.
Direction
With his prime genres of psychology, thriller, and mystery, Fincher has created this masterpiece. The stunningly calibrated mystery revels in intrigue and deception. The visuals are presented with remarkable flashbacks woven into the narrative thread. The director has astonishingly held the upper hand. It has made the audience keen to know more and follow the film. Fincher has always been a great impression with his “what’s gonna happen” policy in his films such as Fight Club, Seven, or his latest series like Mindhunter and Utopia streaming on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
That is to say for sure that Fincher definitely has knowledge of all the 24 crafts of filmmaking. Huge parts of his films are focused on the dark side of human psychology yet to work in total sensibilities. David breathes in every frame of the film. He sets up every color to show the mood of the film, from dark, moody, and using of shadows perfectly. He has used the house as a motif of Amy and Nick’s relationship. It is David’s artistic supremacy that gives the audience’s eyes cinematic excellence.
Character Analysis
“I killed for you; who else can say that?“ These are the dialogues that made Rosamund Pike an evil witch. In the eyes of the world, she is a successful writer of children’s magazine, a well-behaved woman, and a loving wife who loves her husband. Later she poses herself as a victim of her husband’s physical and mental torture through her diary. The main reason behind her disappearance from her house on the day of her wedding anniversary.
In the mid of the movie, the audience gets a bolt out of the blue when they find that Pike has masterminded her own disappearance. Pike orchestrates the evidence behind that would frame Nick as her kidnapper or murderer. The most impressive aspect of all these doings is how finely Rosamund defends her actions. Either it is against Nick or Desi Collings, who she murders brutally. Vengeance, hate, misogyny, misandry, Amy has narrated every side of a marriage in which people try to control the story of their lives.
Whereas, Nick is a former writer who works as a college professor and owns a bar in his hometown to look after her little sister, and physically ill mother, and his mentally ill father. He is already traumatized by his low life, her abusive father, and his parents’ marriage and now his own marriage is turning like theirs’.
In the first half of the film, according to Amy’s POV, Nick seems to be a molester, an abusive husband who hurts her wife whenever he gets a chance. But after the revelation, Nick is nothing but a survivor of his own wife’s abuse and planning. But with film, Nick too becomes more like his wife at lying, keeping secrets, and scheming.
Significance
Gone Girl is a film about the misogyny of how couples hide their own personas from their significant other. From the start how they just take their relationship as a phony. Nick who is a cheater, liar, and laid-back person just wins Amy over with being a successful writer. Contrastingly, Amy who is manipulative, insecure, impresses Nick with being a nice woman with rich manners and a goody double face act.
“When two people love each other and can’t make that work…That’s the real tragedy.”The film delves into the complicated marriage of two people who can not make their relationship work. It throws light on how unconditional love without marriage can turn into mayhem over the years that makes people loathe each other. It tosses a question in the society of the existence of true love and complication of modern marriages under the light of media and society.
