Gone Girl
Critique • Quotes • At the movies
First editionFirst publication
2012
Literary form
Novel
Genres
Crime, mystery, thriller
Writing language
English
Author's country
United States
Length
Approx. 146,000 words
Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike) in happier days in film of Gone Girl.
Getting away with it again
Gone Girl (2014): Film, 149 minutes; director David Fincher; writer Gillian Flynn; featuring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Kim Dickens, Tyler Perry, Missi Pyle, Emily Ratajkowski
If Gone Girl is a movie particularly faithful to the novel Gone Girl, which came out only two years earlier, the obvious explanation is that the screenplay was written by the book's very author. Gillian Flynn is obviously a diversely talented wordsmith.
Another explanation might be that the book's efficient but unexceptional writing, with its multiple twists and cliffhangers, is itself cinematic. You know the adage that mediocre books are more successfully adapted to movies than great books.
However, this novel's structure could make a proper translation into film a tricky proposition. Flynn's ability to surmount these problems and produce an involving and suspenseful script that keeps viewers guessing to the end is impressive, especially as this is her first—not to be her last—produced screenplay.
For one thing, the missing Amy's half of the novel's narration is accomplished via the text of her diary. This has to be dramatized without losing the diary connection so crucial to the plot. You can't just flash pages of handwriting on the screen.
The other half of the book which is Nick's narration is even trickier. In the book it is mainly interior dialogue which allows access to his thoughts and feelings (though unreliably it turned out), while in the visual medium his nuanced character has to be made plain by acting and dialogue, which makes him a less nuanced character.
Trailer for the 2014 movie adaptation of Gone Girl.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike do a good job presenting these unreliable characters, which helps soften some of the implausibilities of plot. David Fincher's direction is fast-paced enough to help skip by the otherwise gaping plot holes, such as the failure of police to follow up obvious leads.
Other aspects of the story are also streamlined for the movie. The bar- and sister-related subplots are mainly dispensed with, for example. And the unsettled ending is shorter and blunter.
But the slimming of material also allows Flynn to give greater focus to those themes that she considers most important. The "cool girls" and other gender issues come more to the fore. Also the critique of sensationalist media, most notably in the rabid Nancy Grace-styled TV host Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle), becomes a more prominent theme.
While these factors don't quite make make Gone Girl the rare film that's "better than the book", they do help make it just as shallowly entertaining.
— Eric
