By Mark HadleyThursday 9 Oct 2014MoviesReading Time: 3 minutes
Gone Girl is a new murder mystery that compares the horror of being at the mercy of a murderer with, the seeming horror of being at the mercy of the person you married.
Ben Affleck stars as Nick Dunne, the hapless ‘everyman’ at the heart of a deepening suspicion in the minds of the Missouri Police Department. On the surface Nick is happily married to the amazing Amy (Rosamund Pike). He’s recently returned to his hometown of Carthage to care for his dying mother and start a new career as the manager of a bar. But when his wife goes missing on the occasion of their fifth wedding anniversary, their fairytale life begins to unravel. Investigators discover Nick’s marriage has been undergoing extreme stress due to financial problems and their forced relocation. Under pressure from the police and at the centre of a growing media frenzy, Nick does himself no favours by engaging in some strange behaviour. When a pattern of lies begins to emerge, everyone starts asking, ‘Did Nick Dunne murder his wife?’
Gone Girl is based on the novel by Gillian Flynn, a novel that climbed to the top of the New York Times Best-seller list in 2012. Flynn was recruited as the screenwriter for this film and paired with director David Fincher who is himself a veteran of the thriller format – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Fight Club and Se7en. Together they keep alive the original fear that sits at the heart of Flynn’s novel: can you really know the person you marry?
Flynn says she was fascinated with the idea of marriage as a he-said/she-said narrative where neither narrator could be trusted, and would be almost impossible to know who the story’s real murderer would be. Flynn says Gone Girl is the result of realizing how lying sits at the heart of every marriage:
“Marriage is sort of like a long con, because you put on display your very best self during courtship, yet at the same time the person you marry is supposed to love you warts and all. But your spouse never sees those warts really until you get deeper into the marriage and let yourself unwind a bit.”
The film version certainly picks up on those themes with Nick demanding to know why Amy wants to push on with what is so clearly a dysfunctional relationship. “All we did is resent each other and try and control each other and cause each other pain,” he says. Why continue now we clearly understand each other? “That’s marriage,” she replies.
Though Gone Girl is certainly one of the best thrillers to grace the big screen in many years, it’s this terror of being trapped in a loveless, even hateful relationship that will really leave the audience shuddering. But is our love really at the mercy of what our partner might one day reveal?
Nick and Amy’s early years are certainly filled with sentimental moments and passionate sex. There’s plenty of pleasure but by the end they’re telling each other their commitment was actually a product of not knowing each other. Yet the Bible’s idea of love actually moves in the opposite direction. The more struggles we experience as couples, the more rough edges we discover, the more opportunity we have for love. Love is that you-over-me commitment that actually grows when things are darkest:
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
If you like a good mystery thriller then you’ll certainly get your money’s worth out of Gone Girl. But don’t also buy the idea that revelations release us from the duty to love. Rather Christians know that we love others not because they love us, but because God knows everything about us, and loves us still.
Rating: MA 15+
Distributor: Fox
Release Date: October 2