Saw it in a sneak peek on Thurs. night in Cleveland, with a New York Film Critics Series simulcast interview of book author and screenplay writer Gillian Flynn, by Rolling Stone movie critic Peter Travers, afterwards.
I’m a big fan of the book, and thought the David Fincher movie more than did it justice. Just the right mix of drama, creepiness, dark humor and cable-news satire, I’d say. Although I never envisioned Ben Affleck as Nick (I was thinking Paul Rudd as I read the book), he did quite well, as did Rosamund Pike as Amy. Nice work by Neil Patrick Harris and Tyler Perry, too, as the old boyfriend and the defense lawyer, respectively.
I can’t wait to see this and will definitely chime in when I do, which will probably be Sunday. Would go tonight but promised to take a kiddo to see Annabelle.
Can’t remember how I pictured Nick but when I heard about the movie and its casting I thought Ben Afleck sounded like a good fit. NPH seems and odd choice for
the ex (Desi?) but I’m more than willing to give hime a chance, as he is excellent in everything he does.
I haven’t been this excited about a movie in a long time. I hope this is an indication of what the movie season will bring.
All I know is, Cool Girls don’t mind movies in which women who fail at being eager to please are revealed to be flat-out monsters. Cool girls don’t mind that, at all!
(Gadzooks, Gillian Flynn is making a massive mint off of throwing her own gender under the bus…)
I’m going to see this tomorrow afternoon. I recently read the book, without knowing it was also a movie - I can easily envision Affleck as Nick. Mildly handsome and sort of gormless.
Hm. How often does a book author directly adapt a book of theirs to a film screenplay? I know Stephen King and William Goldman have both done it; am I forgetting anyone obvious?
That’s fairly common. John Irving won the Oscar for “The Cider House Rules.” William Blatty adapted “The Exorcist,” Mario Puzo helped adapt “The Godfather” PArts I and II and won an Oscar for both, and Carrie Fisher adapted “Postcards from the Edge.” Those are just famous ones that jump to mind.
This first set of book spoilers is under tags, since it’s near the top of the post and someone might see something accidentally. BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE BOOK and don’t want it spoiled, don’t continue looking at this post.
The only female characters presented in the book as being stable and admirable are those who are solidly gender-role compliant; with one exception (Tanner Bolt’s wife Betsy) the ‘stable and admirable’ characters are specifically shown as not being notably intelligent:
**Nick’s dead mother was properly selfless, and not particularly bright
**Nick’s sister, who despite her welcome wisecracking presence, wasn’t smart enough to see what had been going on, and who had little agency other than as ‘faithful, supportive sidekick’ to Nick
**The “ugly” detective who, also, was slow on the uptake.
**The pregnant neighbor: again, low on the IQ scale.
… Betsy, who is shown to be bright and isn’t mocked in any other way, has very little to do in the book. She might well have been included as window dressing to disguise the ‘watch out for smart women!’ message–which is a very popular one; it sells! Betsy is a token.
In much the same way, those who defend the picture of black people Margaret Mitchell created in the 1930s in Gone With the Wind might well say ‘it’s not racist because Mammy’—even though the overwhelming message created by all the shiftless, lazy, dishonest, and/or slow-witted black characters in the book is what dominates, Mammy notwithstanding.
No reader comes away from GWtW with an impression that black people are, in general, strong, stable, and admirable, even though one strong, stable, and admirable black character was included amongst all the non-positive ones. Similarly, the message that smart, uppity, non-selfless women are by definition Bad and Crazy is what dominates Gone Girl.
Flynn–consciously or not–adapted the successful “Frankie and Johnny” formula to create a bestseller. Books sell well when they please a large proportion of readers, to be Captain Obvious, and certain points of view are more pleasing, comforting, and appealing to the mass of humans than are others.
“Frankie and Johnny” was first published in 1912, but versions have been recorded since at least the American Civil War (1860-65). Many accounts of the song’s history, with a sad lack of logic, mention the Civil War connection but still claim that the song is “about” a crime case that occurred in 1899. The fact, regardless of the song’s exact origins, is that it was popular enough to remain well-known today–probably a century-and-a-half after it debuted.
Now, undoubtedly, women have killed male lovers. But you’ll never find any reliable statistics supporting the idea that ‘it’s about equal,’ let alone that women are more likely to kill their male partners than are men to kill their female partners. Of course, it is the reverse. (To cite just one: the ABA has these numbers for deaths between 1998 and 2002:
The popular-for-many-decades song, then, represents a role reversal from what happens most frequently (a man killing “his” woman).
Note that there is no comparable song that has become or remained anywhere near as popular for as many decades, that depicts the more common situation of a man killing the female lover who has cheated on him. No doubt some songs about that situation have been published and recorded. But not one is as well-known, for as long, as “Frankie and Johnny.”
There’s something, then, that masses of people like about switching the roles: making it the bad, violent, crazy woman who attacks the not-perfect-but-still-sympathetic man. We just… like that storyline. We reward those who present it to us. On some level, we find it…satisfying.
At the end of GG, one spouse is living in fear of the other. This spouse must tread carefully–watching every word and action to be certain it doesn’t “set off” the other more powerful and violent spouse. The fearful spouse can’t do anything about this situation, because of a powerful sense of self-sacrifice and self-effacement: there is a child to be protected. So the fearful spouse must go on walking on eggshells–hoping against hope to escape the violence of the crazy, aggressive, destructive spouse.
In the real world, what does that sound like?
Is that a usual or common situation for a man to find himself in (fearing a crazy, violent wife)? I’m not asking “does it ever happen” because it certainly has happened. But, is it the most common or usual domestic situation? Is “man living in fear of the violence of his wife” the first thing you think of when you read the paragraph just above?
Flynn successfully took an extremely common situation–a wife fearing to displease a violent husband–and rendered it palatable and pleasing by letting us hate the Violent Woman and sympathize with the Self-Sacrificing Man. And she is reaping the rewards of telling us the story we want to hear.
It’s pretty unusual for a moderately successful novelist with no film experience to be allowed to adapt her work by herself. Standard procedure would be to pay her to write a draft, then hire a succession of other writers to rewrite it. (She’d still get screen credit — and therefore share in any awards the screenplay got — because she created the characters.)
But a) Flynn’s father was a film studies professor, and b) she’d worked at Entertainment Weekly, so she knows something about how movies work, which may be why Fincher didn’t hire anyone else.
And wisely so. The screenplay is perfect. She kept as much as she could from the book, and even added a couple of nice visual tropes (wiping the lips, the chin promise, etc.) that might not have worked in print form (or without Ben Affleck’s chin). The direction is, not surprisingly, wonderful. The performances are, for the most part, quite good. If you liked the book, you’ll like the movie.
(I have two different friends who hated the book and plan to see the movie. To which I can only say, “Why?”)
Saw it this afternoon and really enjoyed it. A bit darker and more graphically violent than I expected but there were plenty of lighter moments to balance that out. Nicely nuanced performances by Affleck and the Amy actress; the casting was spot-on (Boney the detective was wonderfully believable, as was Neil Patrick Harris in Desi, the old boyfriend role).
I think I would have enjoyed it more had I not read the book first and wasn’t able to anticipate the plot twists. My friend had not read the book nor was he familiar with the plot, and he was caught by surprise several times.
I hadn’t read the book, though I had heard that the ending of the film was going to be different from the book, so I was surprised that the ending I had heard about was the same.
My favorite actors were the two actresses who played Nick’s sister Margo and the detective, Boney. They were perfect.
I don’t think that makes them unintelligent. Amy’s whole plan is meant to be brilliant—that’s why no one figures it out, even fairly smart people like Margo or Detective Boney. I don’t see Boney or Margo as necessarily “gender compliant,” either. Margo was funny and pretty foul-mouthed, for one thing. Besides, the story is about Nick and something that happened to him/his wife. Would be a little odd to go into her whole life story, no?
I’m very happy for her, getting such a big, juicy role and the attention she deserves. I’d seen her in several movies over the years (The Libertine, Pride & Prejudice, An Education, Made In Dagenham, Jack Reacher, and The World’s End are a few) and always liked her.
I hadn’t read the book of this either, and starting out I hated both Nick and Amy so much, thought they were both such idiots, I was hoping they’d just kill each other and the movie would end, but as it went on, I kept getting more and more interested in what was happening. I did NOT see the big twist coming, but I’m not the kind of person who looks for that sort of thing. By the end I was pretty enthralled, and loved it.