Well, actually Rosamund Pike has been
telling us her name for a least a dozen years now, and shouting her versatility out
loud. From here on it will be
really well known. She was the Bond Girl Miranda Frost
in her debut film Die Another Day, (2002), then Austen’s Jane Bennett in Pride
and Prejudice, (2004), in Made in Dagenham, Barney’s Version and An Education, (all released in
2010), then she moved from Bond to Johnny English, Reborn (in 2011), to
America for Jack Reacher in 2012, and home to an Ealing comedy (well, as near
to an Ealing comedy as we get nowadays) in The World’s End, 2013. But
her performance in David Fischer’s latest, Gone Girl, is really something else.
May she follow in the
footsteps of Emily Blunt, the other Brit currently wowing Hollywood.
David Fincher must have known that Rosamund
was in Terry Johnson’s 2003 play Hitchcock Blonde, as the actress auditioning to be the body-double for Janet Leigh in
the Psycho shower scene. Rosamund also plays a naked
shower scene in Gone Girl, and has said that
she ‘is intrigued by characters like the icy blondes who seduce and
deceive in Hitchcock’s films- women who are compelled by their power as objects
of desire.’ (an interview in W Magazine).
The influence of Hitch on Fischer is well
documented, (just Google ‘Fincher and Hitchcock’ and enjoy the links) and can be seen here in the
film’s theme and in particular shots - not just the naked shower scene (which
actually plays a knowing joke on Psycho
fans). Fischer
says that he learnt from the Master
that ‘as a director, film is about how you dole out information so that the
audience stays with you when they’re supposed to stay with you, behind you when
they’re supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they are supposed to
stay ahead of you.’ (Fincher quoted on IMDB). Gone Girl is very good at doling out information, in truly Hitchcockian
style, but how reliable is the information? Much of it comes in flashbacks, and well into its
running time the whole film turns on a swivel, just as in Psycho and Vertigo. Gillian Flynn, who adapted her novel
for the screen, is also a keen
Hitchcock fan. In her novel she
even puts to use the name Madeleine Elster, taken from Vertigo.
Ben Affleck is the Gone Girl’s
husband. She has gone, but
has she joined the departed?
And if so did he have any
part in her departure?
Affleck plays the ambiguity well,
and there is a running theme about public performance and private
feelings. The
voracious American media want to stage their own trial – and his performance as
the anxious husband does not convince them. But does it convince us?
This is a slow burning psychological
thriller, and as Fischer says about Flynn’s source novel, when you peel back the
layers and get to the kernel, you think, Wow, I feel queasy for a whole
different set of reasons I thought I would’. He has also said that he
wanted to put onscreen “disturbing ideas about very disturbed people and
their facades of normalcy, (people who are)
irredeemable and yet intensely human”. He has certainly succeeded
in that, keeping the audience on edge, uncertain about what it knows and does
not know, what is truth and what
is illusion, who is the victim and who the villain.
These ‘disturbing’ themes are amplified by the grey/green
colour palette of Fischer’s usual DP Jeff Cronenweth, and the music from his
collaborators on The Social Network, Trent
Rezzno and Atticus Ross. Among the cast Neil Patrick Harris takes a step up
from a busy TV and voice-over career (Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs), as do Carrie Coon,
Kim Dickens and Tyler Perry (a busy writer, producer and actor who is given an
opportunity to play it big here and takes it). Fischer has always looked for
new talent. Se7en was made in the same year as The Usual Suspects, catapulting Kevin Spacey to stardom and was a big break for
Gwyneth Paltrow, Fight
Club took Helena Bonham-Carter to Hollywood, The Social Network unleashed (sic) Jesse Eisenberg and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo made Rooney Mara a star.
At one level this can be seen as a film
about sin, not just the ‘breaking the 10 Commandments’ kind, but sin as a falling short of
who we truly are. Failing to be authentic - and the consequences of that failure. Hell is not just living with other
people, it is sometimes living with ourselves. If you are willing to be entertained – and
disturbed – I recommend this film; for Ben Affleck’s best performance for (too) many years; for being what I
think is Fischer’s most interesting film to date; and for Rosamund Pike
achievement in fully inhabiting – and developing – the Hitchcock Blonde for the
21st century.
(Sorry for the joke in the title, which must be a total blank for my non-British readers. You see there was this TV comedy series about the Home Guard, and they captured a German Officer, who asked Captain Mainwaring......oh, never mind.)
