Gone Girl Review

Imagine your marriage was the new viral story. Instead of Ferguson, ISIS, or the ice bucket challenge, the intricacies of a union between two people was the new trending topic. You have Bill O’Reilly yelling about you getting away from “the way things were”, Jon Stewart turning your bad moods into his latest character, and anonymous strangers hashtagging about you to prove they are hip to current events. That serves as the basic premise to Gone Girl, a flawed but impressive film whose subtle social commentary and memorable twists cover up most of its shortcomings as a movie. Ben Affleck -- who drops his Boston accent in exchange for 20 pounds of muscle -- stars as the “everyman” Nick Dunne. He’s not the smartest or the richest, but he’s kind, and caring, and yada yada yada (characters aren’t this movie’s strong point). Even as the story progresses and we learn Nick isn’t as perfect as we think, he still feels like little more than a cog in the overall narrative despite a strong performance from Affleck. What keeps the audience engaged is the cloud of mystery conjured up by his “amazing” wife, and the way this fiction affects every character in the film. Amy Elliot (Rosamund Pike) is introduced to us in the same manner, and at the same time, as Nick. She’s pretty, charming, and able to stand out in a room full of “Fitzgerald characters” and hipsters. Or at least that’s what she wants us to think, since everything that isn’t happening real-time is revealed to us via Amy’s journal entries. The entire narrative is told from the perspective of dual unreliable narrators who take turns painting their self as sympathetic and tearing their partner down. This intentionally makes it difficult to assign blame and point out where a once magical relationship went wrong, though few would argue that Nick playing video games and losing his temper is more shocking than what we learn about Amy. Without giving too much of the plot away, let’s just say it follows the viral story format to a T. First off, we get the breaking news and immediate emotional reaction; in this case the disappearance of Amy and the condolences sent to “grieving husband” Nick Dunne. Then when that story gets boring, the Ellen Abbots of the world “go where the story takes them” and start making their own headlines -- “Nick Dunne doesn’t care his wife is missing”. When people see that this slightly controversial stance generates clicks and pageviews, all hell breaks loose. Everyone from Amy’s “best friend” Noelle to Nick’s former student Angie jump in front of a camera to capitalize on the buzz surrounding this story, and it culminates in a witch hunt for Nick Dunne’s head that is based more in irrational emotion than fact. Gone Girl is not a perfect movie. It has plenty of strawman characters, an intentionally complicated plot that still gets too complicated, and the nagging suspicion that the book did a better job explaining Amy’s motives than the movie. But David Fincher’s laser precision, Affleck and Pike’s strong performances, and the interesting marriage (no pun intended) of mass media and domestic issues make this a movie worth talking about. Sure Nick and Amy are described as “the two most fucked up people alive”, but how many marriages would hold up if they were put under a microscope? Would your relationship still be as strong if a camera captured every moment you rolled your eyes when you thought your wife wasn’t looking? And would we even be talking about this if a combination of family issues and economic hardships hadn’t pushed Nick and Amy’s relationship to the brink? These are questions with no easy answers, and they elevate what was close to becoming a standard whodunnit thriller into something that will remain a part of pop culture as long as mistimed selfies are enough to make national news. Overall -- 8.5/10