Gone Girl (2014)
“I’m the cunt you married”
Treacherous white women and horrible sex-deaths have been on my mind lately (see my feed for the 1st, see The Boys S3 for the 2nd) which means today we’re gonna talk about Gone Girl!
This was author Gillian Flynn’s first attempt at adapting her novel for the screen and she worked closely with director David Fincher to turn the intricate plot into something suitable for the screen. Though she cut a lot of the character background info, what remains is their toxic, mutually destructive relationship and an omnipresent, parasitic media frenzy. In an interview with NPR, Fincher called the media presence “tragedy vampirism” and drew inspiration from the coverage he witnessed around the infamous murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.
This phase of Fincher films — his cool tones & crisp lines phase — may work for high stakes political dramas, but I kinda wish a younger Fincher was behind the scenes to make Gone Girl a little messier, grittier. I also wonder if someone else could have brought out a sleazier performance from Ben Affleck, to even out Rosamund Pike’s formidable, terrifying Amy Dune. Her stand-out scene towards the end (YOU KNOW THE ONE) with a highly underrated Neil Patrick Harris makes the whole movie worth a watch.
When writing Amy Dune, Flynn explicitly wanted to create a woman who was not “naturally good”. She created the antithesis of the manic pixie dream girl, a rejection of the pick-me cool girl, and a formidable villain. The threat of a “gone girl” casts a long shadow in the real world; she is both every incel & every feminist’s nightmare. But I’d never hold a singular human responsible for the credibility of an entire movement, and I’m definitely comfortable enough in my intersectionality to revel in this antagonist’s devilish schemes.
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