Gone Girl (film)
Gone Girl is a 2014 American psychological thriller directed by David Fincher and written by Gillian Flynn, based on her 2012 novel of the same name. It stars Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, and Carrie Coon in her film debut. In the film, Nick Dunne (Affleck) becomes the prime suspect in the sudden disappearance of his wife, Amy (Pike) in Missouri.
Gone Girl premiered as the opening film at the 52nd New York Film Festival on September 26, 2014, and was theatrically released in the United States on October 3, 2014 by 20th Century Fox. The film received highly positive reviews from critics upon release, with Pike's performance garnering widespread critical acclaim. It also emerged as a commercial success at the box-office, grossing $369 million worldwide against a $61 million budget, to become Fincher's highest-grossing film. It is considered a cult postmodern mystery.[4][5]
Gone Girl earned Pike numerous nominations including the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.[6]
Plot[edit]
On their fifth wedding anniversary, writing teacher Nick Dunne returns home to find his wife Amy missing. Amy's fame as the inspiration for her parents' successful Amazing Amy children's books ensures widespread press coverage. The media find Nick's apathy towards the disappearance suspicious.
Flashbacks in the form of diary entries show a complex reality and a deteriorating marriage. Amazing Amy was an idealized completion of the real Amy's failures. Both Nick and Amy lost their jobs in the recession and moved from New York to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri, to support his dying mother. Nick grew distant from Amy and began an affair with Andie, one of his students, while Amy became resentful towards Nick for uprooting her.
Detective Rhonda Boney and the forensic team find poorly concealed evidence of struggle and profuse blood loss in the house. Boney learns of financial issues, spousal disputes, and Amy's recent attempt to buy a gun. Medical reports indicate Amy was pregnant, which Nick denies knowledge of.
On every wedding anniversary, Amy had set up elaborate treasure hunts for Nick. This year's clues appear in places where Nick had sex with Andie, thus revealing Amy's knowledge of his affair. Nick discovers thousands of dollars of items purchased with his credit card hidden in his twin sister Margo's woodshed. Amy's clues lead authorities to a half-burnt diary documenting her growing dread of Nick and ending with a genuine fear that he will kill her.
The audience then learns that Amy is alive and hiding in a campground in the Ozarks. After discovering Nick's affair, Amy conceived an elaborate plan to frame him for her murder. She had him ramp up her life insurance and secretly used his credit card to buy the woodshed items. She befriended a pregnant neighbor, told her stories about Nick's temper, and stole her urine to fake a pregnancy, thus eliciting media sympathy after her disappearance. She wrote a diary with increasingly fabricated entries and placed incriminating evidence in the treasure-hunt spots for the police to find. On the morning of her disappearance, Amy drained and splattered her own blood across the kitchen and then cleaned it haphazardly. Her original plan was to drown herself after Nick's arrest and have her body found to ensure his death sentence.
Nick deduces Amy's scheme, convinces Margo of his innocence, and hires lawyer Tanner Bolt, known for representing uxoricide suspects. Nick meets two of Amy's ex-boyfriends: Tommy O'Hara claims he was framed for rape by her after he ended their relationship; wealthy Desi Collings, against whom Amy had filed a restraining order for stalking, turns Nick away.
When Amy's campground neighbors rob her, she calls Desi for help, convincing him that she fled Nick's abuse. Desi agrees to hide her in his lakehouse. Bolt convinces Nick to reveal his affair on a popular talk show, thus seizing the narrative initiative from the media. Andie reveals the affair at a press conference shortly before the show, but Nick insists on conducting the interview. He affirms his innocence and feigns regret for his shortcomings as a spouse, knowing that Amy will be watching.
The interview is a success, garnering widespread sympathy for Nick. However, Boney has already gathered enough murder evidence and arrests Nick and Margo. Bolt bails them out, and they brace for the impending trial. After watching Nick's interview, Amy rekindles her attraction to him and spends weeks crafting her escape story. Using lakehouse surveillance cameras and self-inflicted wrist and vaginal injuries, she makes it appear that Desi kidnapped and raped her. She then seduces Desi, slits his throat during sex, and returns home covered in his blood, thus clearing Nick of suspicion.
Medical examiners lend credence to Amy's story. During questioning, Boney probes her inconsistencies, but Amy spins the focus onto Boney by calling her incompetent. The FBI believes Amy and closes the case, but Boney gleans Amy's guilt. Upon returning home, Amy tells Nick the truth, admitting to Desi's murder. She states that the Nick pleading for her return on TV is the one she wants, and the one who inspired her forgiveness. Nick shares this with Boney, Bolt, and Margo. Despite unanimously agreeing that Amy is guilty, everyone acknowledges a lack of evidence. Bolt wishes Nick well and returns to New York.
A televised interview takes place in their home seven weeks later. Anticipating Nick's intention to leave her and publicly expose her story, Amy reveals her pregnancy minutes before the interview, having inseminated herself with Nick's sperm from a fertility clinic. Nick reacts violently at first but feels responsible for the child and ultimately decides to stay with Amy, despite Margo's despair. The "happy" couple announces on television that they are expecting a child.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Gone Girl grossed $167.8 million in the U.S. and Canada and $201.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $369.3 million, against a production budget of $61 million.[3] Calculating in all expenses, Deadline Hollywood estimated that the film made a profit of $129.99 million, making it one of the most profitable films of 2014.[32]
The film was released on October 3, 2014, in North America in 3,014 theaters and earned $13.1 million on its opening day[33][34] (including the $1.3 million it earned from Thursday late-night showings).[35][36] It finished in first place at the North American box office earning $37.5 million after a neck-and-neck competition with Warner Bros./New Line Cinema's horror film Annabelle which earned $37.1 million. The film is the biggest debut of Fincher's career (breaking Panic Room's opening). It was also the third biggest opening weekend for Affleck—behind Pearl Harbor ($59.1 million), and Daredevil ($40.3 million)—and Rosamund Pike's second biggest opening—behind Die Another Day ($47 million). The film is the tenth biggest October debut overall. The film played 60% female and 75% over 25 years old.[37] The film topped the box office for two consecutive weekends despite facing competition with Dracula Untold in its second weekend[38] before being overtaken by Fury in its third weekend.[39]
Outside North America, it earned $24.6 million from 5,270 screens in 39 international markets on its opening weekend, higher than expected.[28] High openings were witnessed in the United Kingdom ($6.7 million),[40] Australia ($4.6 million),[40] France ($3.65 million)[41] Russia ($3.4 million),[40] and Germany ($2.6 million).[40]
Themes[edit]
Gender[edit]
In a 2013 interview with Time Out magazine writer Novid Parsi, who described the ending of the novel as "polarizing", Flynn explained that she wanted the novel to counter the notion that "women are naturally good" and to show that women are "just as violently minded as men are".[57] In a November 2014 interview, Flynn admitted that the critical gender-related response did affect her: "I had about 24 hours where I hovered under my covers and was like: 'I killed feminism. Why did I do that? Rats. I did not mean to do that.' And then I very quickly kind of felt comfortable with what I had written."[58]
In an October 3, 2014, blog post for Ms. Magazine, Natalie Wilson argues that by not addressing Amy's social privilege which affords her the "necessary funds, skills, know-how and spare time" to stage a disappearance—Gone Girl is the "crystallization of a thousand misogynist myths and fears about female behavior."[59] Alyssa Rosenberg wrote in The Washington Post on October 3, 2014, that, although she was initially "unconvinced" by the book, her fascination with the novel and film was partly due to her conclusion that "Amy Elliot Dunne is the only fictional character I can think of who might be accurately described as simultaneously misogynist and misandrist."[60]
In an October 6, 2014, article titled "Gone Girl's Biggest Villain Is Marriage Itself", Jezebel's Jessica Coen wrote: "Movie Amy pales in comparison to the vivid character we meet in the book. Strip away Book Amy's complexities and you're left with little more than 'crazy fucking bitch.' That makes her no less captivating, but it does make the film feel a lot more misogynistic than the novel."[61] Coen concedes that this did not negate her enjoyment of the film, "as we ladies are well accustomed to these injustices."[61] Time's Eliana Dockterman wrote on the same date that Gone Girl is both "a sexist portrayal of a crazy woman" and a "feminist manifesto", and that this duality makes the film interesting.[62] Zoë Heller of The New York Review of Books wrote: "The problem with Amy is not that she acts in vicious and reprehensible ways, or even that her behavior lends credence to certain misogynist fantasies. The problem is that she isn't really a character, but rather an animation of a not very interesting idea about the female capacity for nastiness", concluding that "The film is a piece of silliness, not powerful enough in the end to engender proper 'disapproval': only wonder at its coarseness and perhaps mild dismay at its critical success."[63]
Writing in The Guardian on October 6, 2014, Joan Smith criticized what she saw as the film's "recycling of rape myths", citing research released in 2013 which stated that false allegations of rape in the UK were extremely rare.[64] She wrote: "The characters live in a parallel universe where the immediate reaction to a woman who says she's been assaulted is one of chivalrous concern. Tell that to all the victims, here and in the US, who have had their claims dismissed by sceptical police officers."[64] Writing for The Guardian on the following day, Emine Saner wrote that Smith's argument "wouldn't carry as much weight were this film set against a vastly wider range of women's stories, and characters in mainstream culture", but concluded with Dockterman's plea for the portrayal of "all sorts of women in our novels".[65]
Tim Kroenert, of the Australian website Eureka Street wrote on October 8, 2014, that the film's predominant focus upon Nick's perspective "serves to obfuscate Amy's motives (though it is possible that she is simply a sociopath), and to amplify her personification of ... anti-women myths"; however, Kroenert concludes that Gone Girl is "a compelling rumination on the impossibility of knowing the mind of another, even within that ostensibly most intimate of relationships, marriage."[66]
Potential sequel[edit]
In an interview in October 2014, Rosamund Pike stated she would return for a sequel if Gillian Flynn wrote the script.[67] In January 2015, Flynn said she was open to the idea of a sequel, but said it would be "a few years down the road" when the original cast and crew would be available again.[68]
Real world kidnapping[edit]
For several months, the police and the media labelled the real world kidnapping of Denise Huskins in March 2015 as the "Gone Girl" hoax because they erroneous thought it followed a similar pattern as the movie. In fact, Huskins was the victim of an actual kidnapping and not the perpetrator of a hoax.[69] The case was the subject of a documentary American Nightmare.
Media related to Gone Girl at Wikimedia Commons