2014, David Fincher (The Social Network) -- download
Nick (Ben Affleck, Argo) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike, Wrath of the Titans) are the perfect couple living in the midwest in a nice house in a nice town. The day begins with Nick visiting his twin sister (Mar)Go (Carrie Coons, The Leftovers) at the bar (The Bar) they own together. It may be Nick and Amy's 5th wedding anniversary but things seem off with Nick. He's drinking at 11am. He returns home to find his house in a disrupted state, furniture overturned, things broken, his wife nowhere to be found. He immediately involves the police.
As the search and the search drama goes on, we are interspliced with a story from the point of view of Amy, as she relates, via diary, how they met and eventually, how things started to go wrong. They were the perfect couple but only when in balance.
The beginning, where Nick is seen as the husband whose wife is missing and desperate to find her, where he is also the guy who smiles too much, who has every interaction dissected, who is the first suspect, who is a bit of an ass, who was cheating on Amy, is only the beginning of the story. Things shift, drastically. I hesitate to spoiler things but it has been almost a decade since the movie came out, so...
The next act of the movie is about Amy, who is not missing, who is not murdered, who has decided to punish Nick for no longer being the perfect husband. She will frame him for murder, a frame-job which she intricately builds over time, and then she will kill herself. But the "perfect" frame-job only works while she has money, and she is only a mastermind in her own mind, and once her plan comes undone, she adjusts, with homicidal intent. Fuck, she's psycho.
This was only a few years before Affleck was alleged to have had an affair with his nanny. But the movie might just be the template for Affleck being seen as the ultimate in entitled husband assholes. Sure, the movie might frame it so we think, "well, he's an asshole, but at least he's not a psycho," but it doesn't diminish the role he played in the events. Its complicated, as they say.
The structure of the story is fun, the way it plays with your sympathies. It makes you take sides, make conclusions but then smashes those conclusions on the floor. And the movie also frustrates you by just... ending. There is no conclusion, no resolution, just a situation where things end up. Amy is alive, she has what she wants, Nick is trapped but also chooses to be trapped. Fuck, she's psycho but then... what is he?
Kent's post. He thinks about it more than I do. But then again, he always does.
Fincher films have a clear dividing line. There's pre-Zodiac and post-Zodiac Fincher. There's a 5 year gap between Panic Room and Zodiac, but Panic Room, Fight Club, The Game, Se7en and even Alien3 all seem of a piece...faster paced, more wild and frenetic. Certainly some finding of footing along the way.
ReplyDeleteZodiac and what follows all seem much more deliberate in pacing and style. But there's a 6 year gap between Gone Girl and Mank, and it could be that later stage Fincher is becoming even more patient. Still haven't seen Mank. I tried one day when it first came out and couldn't get into it.
I did a rewatch of phase 1 Fincher, and still need to do a rewatch of phase 2.