‘Gone Girl‘, made in 2014 by David Fincher on a screenplay written by Gillian Flynn who adapted her own bestseller, is a winning combination: it is a very well written thriller with enough upheavals and perspective changes so that the two and a half hours of screening pass without you realizing it; it is a social drama that tells important and true things about life in a small town in the American Midwest and about the role of television and sensationalist talk shows in manipulating public opinion; and above all it is the drama of a marriage. If I had to choose an alternative title for the film, I think ‘Marriage Story’ would be very appropriate. Ultimately, everything that happens in this story that begins with the disappearance of a woman announced to the police by her husband, is the result of what happened in the five years of marriage that preceded the events, and which, as in Noah Baumbach‘s film will be described widely through flashbacks and excerpts of the diary written by the missing woman.
I haven’t read the book, so I can’t appreciate how far the film moves away from the story in the book. I can say that the script is smartly written, in a way that keeps the viewer’s attention constantly alert. It begins as a detective drama, with the disappearance of Amy (Rosamund Pike), a successful writer, and the investigation led by two local police officers. In a short time, her husband (Ben Affleck), also a writer, but less talented, and a college teacher becomes the main suspect, with ‘help’ from the press and television stations which rummage through the history of their marriage finding the cracks and less harmonious aspects inherent in almost any couple relationships. After a good hour of watching, the perspective changes by the finding of a diary that gives voice to the missing woman. The investigation turns into a murder investigation, and I will not reveal more to avoid committing the spoiler’s sin. I will only say that the attention continues to be kept and the tension will increase towards an end, which is one of the possible but also debatable many endings, which will not make everyone happy.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play two of the best roles of their careers in this film. The atmosphere of the small town with its social differences, with the bar and the curious neighbors, with the public opinion influenced and changing their sympathies or hatred after the last talk show is excellently rendered, so are the portraits of the two well-meaning policemen and of the lawyer in search for cases with maximum publicity. The use of flashbacks together with the journal pages that trigger them gives a feeling of continuity to the story but also of permanent uncertainty about the credibility of the sources. As in any good thriller, viewers can’t be sure about what they see on screen, whom they can trust, how much of what the heroes tell is true, and what they omit to say, intentionally or not. From this point of view, divorce proceedings and criminal investigations are similar, and ‘Gone Girl’ combines the two types of conflicts. A film that captivated me and that I recommend to those who have not seen it yet.