Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

[mfunk9786]

That trailer felt much more like the book than the teaser did, and it definitely did the trick in raising my level of anticipation. Say what you will about some of David Fincher's choices re: source material over the years, but he always wrings the most out of what's there - and this looks to be no exception. Luckily, in this case, the book is solid and pulpy and mysterious in all the right ways and it shouldn't be difficult to knock this out of the park. Also, I haven't seen this posted here, but it appears according to Wikipedia that the film is going to be 116 minutes long, and mentions that principal photography only took around 5 weeks, which has to be some sort of a Fincher benchmark.

[John Cope]

I think the book is garbage but I too trust Fincher with this kind of material and finding what's potent about it. The trailer makes it look like the inverse To the Wonder. Look forward to Fincher turning this potboiler Liftetime junk (Junk Girl) into a Dragon Tattoo nightmare. Love the shot of the cat with the cameras going off and the lights flashing around it. The kind of detail that elevates this.

[Professor Wagstaff]

I knocked the book out in about two afternoons back in early May and consider it a hell of potboiler. I went in knowing nothing about the book, so it came as a big surprise the the novel has a very macabre, venomous sense of humor. I have enough hope in David Fincher at this point that this material feels like a walk in the park for him, though I wish I could get a handle on whether or not the movie maintains the book's dark humor. I feel like Fincher would bring that element to the screen given that he's never shied from black comedy in the past (Zodiac's funnier than most comedies), but I worry that element will be lost if he's asked to go the more somber route of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

[mfunk9786]

John Cope, I have to wonder what you were expecting going into Gone Girl to come away from that book with such a vicious reaction to it. It was very solid pulp, at worst.

[John Cope]

To be honest with you, I'd have to look up my thoughts on the old Facebook in order to remember exactly what I responded so negatively to. But the residual disdain for it lingers on. I think it may have had something to do with the fact that it consistently rubbed me the wrong way because it seemed to think it was smarter and more sophisticated than it was (i.e. "real" literature rather than just pulp). I love pulp and I love stuff many others deem as junk (thought Harlan Coben's similarly high concept Six Years was fantastic, for instance, and wish somebody would adapt that) but I do not like nor appreciate the compulsion to dress it up and attempt to qualify it or apologize for it by making it out to be something it simply is not and cannot be. That's a lack of confidence in the primal power of the material for one but it does, of course, go beyond that. The generic restrictions of pulp as genre are an obstruction to the kind of literary detail and psychological depth Flynn seems to think she is providing, rendering all of that ultimately facile, shallow. And it would require someone with far more skill than Flynn to pull of a successful composite or synthesis or development upon the merging of those forms or modes (she ain't Joyce). Still, Fincher's cutting to the heart of the matter method could render up the vitality of what animates the pulp and clear away the pretensions that can't be realized or reached. If he just casts it in a darker glow that alone would at least give it some of the substantive depth that it lacks by implying nuance--a more manageable analogy for Flynn's lit ambitions and one the material can accommodate. He does indeed have to work with what he's got and Flynn's confused and misguided aspirations could work in his favor by giving him some grist for the mill, who knows.

[mfunk9786]

I don't know why I read that through a gendered lens, but I'm sure hoping I was just being oversensitive by doing so.

[John Cope]

You were. I would have had equal opportunity disdain for whomever had written it.

[flyonthewall2983]

Here's another link for the new trailer as the other one seems to have gone kaput.

[Jeff]

I've enjoyed reading all of Flynn's novels to varying degrees, this one the most. They all certainly qualify as trashy pulp, Gone Girl being the only one with any sort of literary ambitions. They're fun page-turners that you can crank out in a couple of days. Nothing wrong with that.

It looks like Fincher and Flynn have worked out a way structuring the book's convoluted narrative for the screen. I'm interested to see how that plays out, especially since she's been so involved. There is some thematic substance about relationships, the economy, and the media for Fincher to tease out if he's interested in doing so. He's really good with this sort of material. If nothing else, Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography looks pretty great, and I'm counting on a great Reznor/Ross score.

[flyonthewall2983]

Speaking of, looks like Reznor and Ross will be working with an orchestra this time.

[Jeff]

Opening the New York Film Festival

[flyonthewall2983]

New Trailer

Tyler Perry: “If I'd known who David Fincher was, and his body of work, I would have said no.”

[knives]

Which is taken out of context. The full quote indicates he was intimidated by how large a production this was.

[flyonthewall2983]

Yeah, I read the Vanity Fair article soon after I'd written that. Going to be more careful what I quote from 2nd-hand Twitter quotes.

[flyonthewall2983]

Really good Playboy (so probably NSFW based on the web address alone) interview with Fincher, covering his life, career and the choices he made regarding the screen adaptation and filming of this.

[Jeff]

Reviews are trickling out tonight. They're mostly quite positive.

Surgically precise, grimly funny and entirely mesmerizing over the course of its swift 149-minute running time, this taut yet expansive psychological thriller represents an exceptional pairing of filmmaker and material, fully expressing Fincher’s cynicism about the information age and his abiding fascination with the terror and violence lurking beneath the surfaces of contemporary American life.

With a screenplay by the novelist herself, David Fincher's film of Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn's twisty, nasty and sensational best-seller, is a sharply made, perfectly cast and unfailingly absorbing melodrama. But, like the director's adaptation of another publishing phenomenon, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, three years ago, it leaves you with a quietly lingering feeling of: “Is that all there is?”

Smart and shocking, this adaptation of Gillian Flynn's bestseller tells a sordid story through layers of illusion, rationalizations, and tabloid media frenzy, resulting in a rare thriller for intelligent adults.

GONE GIRL is an exhilarating, pitch-black marital comedy; Fincher's EYES WIDE SHUT; the movie of the year.

[flyonthewall2983]

3 full tracks from the score

[mfunk9786]

SpoilerShow

Wait, why would Nick even walk into the house with this woman once she returns from her little adventure? An ending this bad is unforgivable, and entirely tears an otherwise dazzling film out at the roots.

That said, 90% of the film is riveting and downright fantastic at times, and Rosamund Pike does some astonishingly good work. It's a shame it all ends up amounting to very little.

[Jack Phillips]

SpoilerShow

Wait, why would Nick even walk into the house with this woman once she returns from her little adventure? An ending this bad is unforgivable, and entirely tears an otherwise dazzling film out at the roots.

That said, 90% of the film is riveting and downright fantastic at times, and Rosamund Pike does some astonishingly good work. It's a shame it all ends up amounting to very little.

This is the kind of spoiler I appreciate getting (if only someone had done this for me on The Sixth Sense). There's no reason to run out and see this now. I'll give priority to other titles.

[mfunk9786]

You're... welcome? The ending to The Sixth Sense was the polar opposite of this, though. That was a stunner, out of nowhere and pretty meticulously planned and germane to the story to boot.

SpoilerShow

The ending to this film completely abandons the ratcheted-up realism that the rest of the film exists in and makes a character do something that there's no possible explanation for, which is why it's unexplained, even when another character asks point-blank [paraphrasing] "Why the fuck are you doing this?" through tears and complete confusion.

I had expected Fincher to make the best possible adaptation of this book, and for most of the runtime he did - but by not either drastically changing or removing the gangrenous limb that is the ending, I'm not convinced that this is actually the best possible adaptation of the source material. It's a very good film with a very bad epilogue, so everything ends up averaging out somewhere in the middle.

[DarkImbecile]

I respectfully but totally disagree, mfunk... and Jack, you should maybe not be quite so quick to dismiss a movie on cryptic, secondhand spoiler criticism.

SpoilerShow

First of all, I felt like the shift from realism to delicious and delirious satire didn't happen suddenly during the last five minutes, but gradually and steadily progresses as the movie unfolds. By the time the blood starts spraying (fantastic imagery and use of Trent Reznor's score in that scene, by the way), we're way past the point of pretending this is a documentary in terms of realistic behavior.

Secondly, while some sort of moralistic punishment for her or escape for him might have made for a more satisfying plot conclusion, it would have totally undermined the value of the film's delightfully sharp perspective on marriage.

I hadn't read the book, so I can't comment on the quality of the film as an adaptation, but as a commentary on relationships and the dangerous parts of truly knowing another person, I thought it was pretty fantastic.

[DarkImbecile]

And, I should add, technically sumptuous as well, as might be expected from Fincher.

[criterion10]

SpoilerShow

I think the ending works rather well, because it deviates so much from realism--it becomes like something out of an surrealist film. And there's something wonderfully dark, nasty, and cynical about it all. Fincher himself claimed in an interview that the movie is an "interesting mystery, and I think at some point the movie becomes an absurdist thriller."

I do think the final few minutes end on a somewhat anti-climactic note though. I might've liked some sort of final encounter between Affleck and Pike that was able to serve as a great last confrontation, hammering home the film's themes, before returning to the final shot (although the scene where he throws her against the wall was very well done). That abrupt quick-fade to black was a little too jarring for me personally. It was interesting to hear an almost collective gasp from the audience as the credits rolled, however.

[mfunk9786]

SpoilerShow

Nick puts so much effort into clearing his name and trying to get Amy, the wife that he was relieved to hear was possibly murdered before finding out she'd tried to frame him, to come out of hiding and by extension exonerate him of the crime he was falsely accused of. Once she emerges and he clams up for the remainder of the film. I don't mind the idea that somehow he's trapped into staying with this woman, as absurd as it is. But I do mind having absolutely zero insight into why in the world he'd go that route having seen everything that came before it. Like I mentioned before, Go even asks him why he's going to do this, and he provides very little in the way of an answer. We spend so much time with Nick throughout the film and feel like we have a very good idea of not just how sociopathic, but how dangerous Amy truly is, and then are asked to believe that not only does Nick stick around, but he does so without letting the audience in on why. I realize that everything grows pulpier as the ending is approached, but instead of having the juice that it should, it lacks any of the momentum or insight that much of the rest of the film had, and that's my primary issue with it. It doesn't even have the guts to be ambiguous. Fincher and Flynn wrap a lovely package in a crummy bow, when perhaps if the movie had ended when Amy hugged Nick upon her return, they wouldn't have needed a bow at all.

[krnash]

mfunk, I think the gap you need to jump in order for the ending to make sense is

SpoilerShow

to understand that this isn't a crime thriller, it's a satire on the American marriage. It's an exaggeration of the idea many people live their life by, which is to stick through anything to avoid a separation, which is sometimes seen as the ultimate possible disgrace...and which often takes more work and self analysis than just sticking together, believing that eventually two people have to click happily. Fincher is constantly reworking his audiences expectations. This is to, say, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo what Zodiac was to Se7en: a complete inversion, a different kind of comment on familiar material.