The lies that bind

‘Gone Girl’ is America gone wrong, circa 2014. It’s right there on the edge, showing us people who act like we suspect people act once the cameras are gone and the smiles are absent from their faces.

There are plenty of tense scenes in Gone Girl, but the one that kind of makes your skin crawl shows Nick and Amy Dunne (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike), a young married couple, awkwardly holding hands while descending a staircase, running a gauntlet of TV cameras and microphones inside their home, smiles pasted on their faces.

The façade of unhappy marriage never looked as chilling as it does in David Fincher’s new thriller.

Once in a while, Fincher comes up with one of his zeitgeist movies, films that capture a moment in modern culture. Fight Club certainly did this; The Social Network was another lightning rod movie, coming out just on the cusp of Facebook’s world domination. Later films like Zodiac failed to hit the mark, stifled by its cops’ perspective, rather than letting us inside the serial killer’s world; and his Girl with the Dragon Tattoo felt trapped by its cold environment and chilly characters.

Gone Girl is America gone wrong, circa 2014. It’s right there on the edge, showing us people who act like we suspect people act once the cameras are gone and the smiles are absent from their faces.

Fincher is on his gleeful best game here, relating the bonkers story — based on Gillian Flynn’s bestseller and screenplay — of a hapless doofus and his missing wife.

The lies married couples tell each other, and the world, are what hold together the mystery of the Dunnes — Amy and Nick (Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike) — two people so photogenic they could be movie stars. They’re the perfect couple, from the outside. When Nick comes home to find his living room vandalized and his wife missing, he proceeds to unravel completely, acting exactly like the person the media rushes to judge. Granted, Nick is no perfect hubby. Laid off during a recession, he runs a bar (called The Bar) purchased with his wife’s trust fund money. He’s scruffy, disheveled and smiles at the wrong times — such as while posing next to a poster of his missing wife at a police press conference.

Affleck, for the most past, plays an inattentive doofus, which is perfect because he excels at looking like The Man Who Knew Too Little. Pike is multi-layered and riveting as his wife, and those not familiar with the story get to know a lot more about her from her diary pages, read in voiceover as the story unfolds.

But as far as reviewing Gone Girl, it’s pretty hard to talk about details or plot points without a parade of spoilers. Which is a pity, because it’s the kind of movie you want to discuss, raising questions such as: do people change themselves to suit one another in marriage, or do they just keep their dark sides hidden, ready to erupt at any moment?

We know something is up from the opening shot, when Nick’s voiceover talks about his wife’s pretty skull, and how he’d like to crack it open to see what thoughts are inside.

The role of the media in criminal cases is the big theme of Gone Girl — how people have become conditioned by reality shows to put on their best acts for the cameras. Flynn’s tight screenplay reveals how such acting is part and parcel of everyday married life. We quickly learn that Nick and Amy are far from the perfect couple — the shadow of economic recession and diminished expectations hangs over the story like a cloud of dread — but the depths of that dissatisfaction get played out slowly, in a gripping, taut thriller.

As Amy, Pike outdoes herself, offering a perfectly made-up, coiffed image and enigmatic smile to the world — the woman trapped in a paid-for lifestyle, one that her controlling parents reaped from a series of children’s books (“Amazing Amy”), turning their daughters’ mediocrity into a publishing empire and trust fund. Pike is a sure thing for an Oscar nomination.

Affleck is basically himself here, but that means he has to work that much harder to gain our trust. And the effort pays off.

The rest of Fincher’s cast is deliciously fun to watch, from Kim Dickens’ turn as a wry investigating officer looking into Amy’s disappearance to Neil Patrick Harris’ arch role as a metrosexual ex-suitor. Other standouts are (Precious screenwriter) Tyler Perry as smooth defense attorney Tanner Bolt and Carrie Coon as Nick’s twin sister. All give detailed, highly enjoyable performances.

Assembling his now-familiar killer lineup — cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing the tense, eerie score — Fincher’s narrative unfolds in fits and starts, lurching us from one realization to another. Just as The Social Network did, it seems to shift into higher and higher gear as the facts spill onto the screen. Tension has long been one of Fincher’s key strengths — the bottling up and exploding of Ed Norton as he finally realizes the true identity of Tyler Durden; the feverish creation of Facebook by super nerd Mark Zuckerberg in a lonely Harvard dorm room. In Gone Girl, we’re wound so tightly into the story that the payoff, inevitably, feels just a little too casual and resigned.

Yet in modern life, the ties that bind are just as often the lies that bind, and Fincher’s final tone of quiet fear and loathing fits this ironic gaze at American Gothic, circa 2014, like a glove.

After all, what was it that Kurt Cobain once sang? Something about “Married… Buried”?