“What are you thinking?” “How are you feeling?” “What have we done to each other?” The three opening questions of David Fincher’s film Gone Girl based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling 2012 novel sets the entire mood of the 149-minute saga to take us through a psycho-thriller not so much in search of the girl gone, but more into ourselves.
On the morning of his fifth marriage anniversary Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) comes home from his morning beach walk and his bar (which he runs with his sister) to find his home violated, a glass table overturned and his wife Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) missing. Where has she disappeared?
He calls in the cops, led by Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) and it could have been one casual ‘missing person’ case except for Amy is ‘Amazing Amy’ the darling of America, immortalised in her mother’s fairy tales, an alter-ego she perhaps never grew out of, or was not allowed to. A lot of that stayed on which maybe jiggered her adult relationship, for there is an abyss of difference between being child-like and childishness.
Bit after bit the plot begins to unravel to point all evidence towards the implication of her husband Nick as her murderer. Amidst press conferences, massive volunteer searches and his world being torn apart, there are tonnes of evidence which come across which would not take much to crucify him in a court of law. Massive credit card shopping bills, no job, unhappy incidents and a former student as his mistress are pegs which are enough to nail him to the wood.
In a world where we are ruled more by social media and television, Nick’s attitude is interpreted as inadequate and uncalled for with a particular TV host even hinting that he was rather too close to his sister, in whose house he stays over, more for avoiding the media than moral support.
In sheer desperation, Nick turns to attorney Tanner Bolt (Tyler Perry) the ‘patron saint of wife-killers’ who gives him lessons in PR and turns him overnight into the ‘becharaa’ of the story.
At this juncture Amy emerges and unfolds the brilliance of the web she spun like the Black Widow, with each and every step so carefully taken.
The second half of the film is pure ‘Basic Instinct’ and Pike is incredibly amazing in what she does and says, the way she oozes out her voluptuousness and hunger, desire and fear and above all the calmness with which she manipulates.
What goes wrong in a marriage or a relationship between two adults? Is it merely communication which breaks down or there are a series of happenings which built one after the other and finally drive one to the point of insanity? Amy is pregnant at the end of the film- all she ever wanted was a baby, to start afresh in life.
Ben’s mistress is his former student. Was he to blame or was it Amy being possessive? Did love leave them or did they leave love?
Herein Gone Girl rises much above the average, it not only sets a psycho-thriller into motion to keep the audience on the edge of their seats and then say a big ‘wow’ but also it makes us delve deep into each one of ourselves to ask, what is going on inside us? What are we thinking of?
Don’t think too much on this one and catch it at the nearest theater, at your earliest.
Rating: 4/5