Gone Girl

Just what goes into sustaining a successful marriage, what is that secret critical ingredient for ensuring the preeminence of your conjugal bliss?

Mad blind overwhelming desire may wear off, especially if the couple in question doesn't role play or at least dress-up from time to time, possibly as their favourite Star Trek character, and if the initial hard-pounding insatiable craze dissipates, the arduous work necessary to recapture its incandescence sets in, both participants required to reimagine its stringency, dedication and commitment, adhered to as pluralizing factors.

In David Fincher's Gone Girl, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) refuses to abide by such an adherence, succumbing to adulterous lechery, slowly destroying the love of his spirited partner.

Mistake.

Or mistakes, seeing how he's been ignoring her for years while living a life of sloth off her trust fund, after having moved from New York City (where he worked as a writer) to Missouri, much to wife Amy's (Rosamund Pike) dismay.

He's a jerk, he blames it on her, total jackass.

But he has no idea that Amy's pure psycho.

The film's divided into two halves, one focusing on Nick as he comes to terms with his inextricable predicament, the other which brings Amy into the mix, focusing on her troubles on the road, until a crucial accidental resurgence, of the romantic love which at one point defined her.

Kierkegaard style.

At first I thought the introduction of Amy was an unfortunate twist.

I figured the film would slowly continue to suffocate lacklustre Nick, his tension inimically increasing, a high-wired harrowing stench, accentuating paranoid asphyxia.

Amy's introduction eliminates this tension, replacing it with alternative constraints which infernalize her psychotic scenario, which is rather excessive, considering that she could have just left him.

But her passion demands vengeance, vengeance which she seeks eruditely, revelling in the media's saccharine sensationalization, before rediscovering that lost kernel of youth.

There's a great sequence where she's robbed after letting her guard down, the sequence diversifying the film's wedded hysteria by injecting minor seemingly ineffectual characters, who become common denominators in the subsequent action.

Gone Girl has plenty of variability, strong major and minor characters, ridiculous yet plausible logistics, competing disastrous degenerations, polarities within polarities, a sympathetic coach, an amorphous yet easy-to-follow blend of media, family, legality, and law enforcement, Proust is mentioned twice (in uncomplimentary fashions however), desperate strategic planning, and a non-traditional take on victimization.

The ending's solid, a bizarre reversal of what's-to-be-expected, the film's myriad depressions, sentimentally sanctified.

Quite dark.

Quite good.

Not my favourite David Fincher film, but you still see why he's one of America's best.