Gone Girl concentrate.
That might be the best description of the film Gone Girl, based on the best-selling 2012 thriller by author Gillian Flynn. The tale of a man suspected in the disappearance of his wife – and the all too predictable media storm that follows – is pared down to its essentials here.
But the remarkable thing is, even with some plot lines pared out or scaled back, that essence is still there – the cynical take on marriage, the pointed question of whether a woman can ever be herself with a man and the sobering realization of how our absorption of media can color our every perception.
Flynn, who adapted her book for the screen, seems almost to have envisioned it as a film from the beginning, drawing on snappy dialogue that works on film, but might have seemed too glib or shallow on the page.
For all those who find themselves endlessly disappointed by big-screen book adaptions, Gone Girl is the antidote, but those who prefer films to books will miss little by opting for the movie. Even clocking in at two and a half hours, it is well paced and well acted.
Ben Affleck, as Nick Dunne, is nearly perfectly cast as a slightly smarter and less pathetic version of the aggrieved husband than the book’s. The actor can be a glib charmer on film, but he always has been at his best not as a Pearl Harbor-type hero, but as someone who understands he’s compromised – and isn’t sure what to do next. That’s certainly Nick’s quandary.
Rosamund Pike has the bigger challenge. An exceedingly cool beauty, Pike largely has played sweet victims or vampy arm candy. Amy Elliott Dunne is all image, first as the centerpiece of her parents’ successful children’s book franchise, then as the lovely headshot in the missing posters and billboards. The British export nails Amy’s cipher quality, that key idea that no matter how much we gaze on her smiling face we will not know what drives her.
The supporting cast does not have a wink link. It includes a winning Tyler Perry, who drops some of the film’s best lines in limited screen time, Kim Dickens, who as a dogged detective shines in a crucial duel in which she knows she is overmatched, and Missi Pyle, as fine as a stand-in for Nancy Grace as you will find.
Director David Fincher specializes in unsavory bits of business, like Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac, films that unflinchingly dip into the darker sides of human nature. Another standout, Gone Girl will fit on his resume just fine.
Gone Girl begins screening Thursday with evening showtimes. The film opens in wide release Friday.
