Gone Girl

Gone Girl was a movie that was hyped all summer long; every time I saw a new movie I saw a preview for Gone Girl. The trailers always left me scratching my head, I had to know what happened in the movie so of course the first week it came out I went and saw it.

The movie is based off a book also called Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. It is about a woman who thought she was madly in love with her husband only for the marriage to fall apart thus making the two hate each other. The wife goes missing and the husband gets accused of killing her. Through out the movie we learn that the wife, seen by the community as a loving and caring housewife, is actually a manipulating, psychopath that will stop at nothing to get what she wants.

The director of the film is David Fincher. Some of his previous films include The Social Network, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Seven and my personal favorite Zodiac. The majority of those movies all have handful of similar qualities; suspenseful, crime and they are all thrillers, Gone Girl fits in all three of those categories. The main character of Gone girl was played by Ben Affleck who is also known for playing in thriller movies such as The Town, Argo, Good Will Hunting, Armageddon and The Sum of Fears (Ben Affleck movies kind of suck except for this one). Ben Affleck won Academy awards for Good Will Hunting and Argo (I'm baffled the he has Academy awards but Leonardo Dicaprio does not. I'll get off my soap box now). David Fincher has been nominated for two Academy awards as best director for The Social Network and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but he never won. When you look at other thrillers such as Silence of the Lambs there is not nearly as many twists as in Gone Girl; half way through Gone Girl I thought I had it all figured out and then BOOM the story got twisted 180 degrees, in Silence of the Lambs you know what is going on the whole movie you're just constantly wondering how it will end. Taking a look at Fincher's previous films Zodiac and Social Network I noticed that the main characters are intelligent and witty but in Gone Girl Affleck's character is a complete meat head idiot, too dumb to keep himself out of trouble. in fact, in Gone Girl the villain is the brains of the movie opposite of Zodiac and Social Network.

This movie was important because it is one of the biggest movies out right now. It gives husbands and wives chills throughout the whole time, this movie was like nothing seen before, if you ask me this is a definite game changer for the thriller genre. People go missing every day and there are handfuls of movies about people going missing but this one has so many twist and turns it is miles above other missing person movies. As for reflecting our culture I'm not quite sure if this crazy psycho movie does. I realize that husbands and wives unfortunately do start to hate each other at some point in their marriages but I really truly wonder if anyone has ever hated their significant other this much and put this crazy of a plan together. On a small scale I guess the movie does reflect our culture in the sense that husbands and wives do occasionally hate each other. I'd say the target audience of the movie would be males and females aged 25-55, people that are either in serious relationships or that are married. As for stereotypes I think it squashes the stereotype that all white house wives just sit around all day, this housewife was insane!

This movie definitely has many strengths and the occasional weakness. One of the the strengths was that the movie was two stories, the husbands version and how the whole world thought he had killed his wife, and the wife's version and how she had come to hate her husband and her psychotic plan she devised. I felt that one of the weaknesses of the movie was that everything worked out so perfectly; the husband of a missing woman would not smile for reporters, he would look miserable and distraught and in my best attempt not to be a spoiler I will just say that certain situations through out the movie that just work out so perfectly it is just a tad bit unbelievable. But all in all I really enjoyed this movie; the story was compelling, the actors did a great job and this is another great film done by David Fincher. It is tough for me to rank this as Fincher's best movie ever because, I have seen Zodiac probably ten times but I would definitely put this in his top four movies. There are some scenes in this movie that really push it to the limit, if you watch the link below you will learn exactly what scenes, and for that reason I have a feeling this movie will be talked about for quite some time. I looked up a review by Justin Chang on variety.com and they were able to put into words what I felt about this movie "But what makes “Gone Girl” so particularly potent — and such an appropriate match for this filmmaker’s icy view of the human condition — is its deliciously cynical attitude toward the relationship at its core; its sly awareness of the thin line between love and hate, happiness and misery; and its skill at laying bare the cruel, manipulative behavioral patterns that spouses can lapse into over time." Also rottentomatoes.com said that 90% of viewers enjoyed it and according to fandango.com 79% of critics liked it.

After seeing this movie I didn't run out and buy every Fincher or Affleck film ever made, but this does give me a reason to watch the Zodiac again. This project had me looking up all of Fincher's work and I was amazed to see that he has directed some of my favorite movies. I have also looked up a handful of interviews of Ben Affleck and he is actually starting to grow on me, slowly but surely. When I saw gone girl I took my girlfriend with me so since then her and I have been sharing our feelings about the movie with one another along with my two roommates that have seen the film and we all agree that this movie is a must see.

From this project I have learned a couple of things, one being that if a man performs oral sex on a woman in a movie it USUALLY gets an NC-17 rating (until this film) and I learned of a couple of movies that have had to make changes in order to not get that rating. I also learned that David Fincher is one of my favorite directors, all the different techniques he uses for his movies and all the little metaphors that go unnoticed while watching movies. And finally I learned the sad truth that Ben Affleck has an Academy award but good ol Leo DiCaprio does not.





Gone Girl Trailer     Washington post review     How Gone Girl pushed the limits