One of my first thoughts after watching the movie all the way through to its self-satisfied ending was the sentiment summed up best, in my opinion, by Charles Rennie McIntosh who wrote, "there is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfections of the mere stylist". That sense of (my own) nagging doubt was strengthened by the conclusion to the generally supportive and positive review of the film by Xian Brooks in The Guardian. He wrote,
"Gone Girl, finally, may be no more than a storm in a teacup. But what an elegant, bone-china teacup this is. And what a fearsome force-10 gale we have brewing inside."
I enjoyed enormously (if that's not an odd term) David Fincher's Seven, so what is it, I wonder, bothers me about his latest film? Not its moral ambiguity. That much I'm sure of. And not its fabrication, for sure. It's about as well constructed a film as I've seen in a long time - beautifully shot (albeit in cool and alienating tones), well acted by a well-cast crew of actors (the stars are very good but the supporting cast adds real depth - Tyler Perry is revelatory, Kim Dickens as the lead investigator is excellent and the two television 'journalists' are delicious). It's well directed.
So what don't I like?
It feels hollow and heartless. I have never been a fan of nihilism and this movie has a cynical misanthropy that reaches all the way to the core of its being. I worry too that it's predicated on a world view that asks us to believe most people are either stupid, gullible or fatally indifferent to reality. I get that it's a satirical look at marriage in modern America. At least I think that's what I'm being offered. But I don't rally want to buy into that world view.
I can see the roots of Hitchcock that support this modern dystopian fable. And it's no great surprise to read that some of the team that brought us Gone Girl intend to re-make Strangers On A Train. But, I just think, no thanks. It's not simply that I don't want to live in their world. I'm not even interested in visiting.
