I actually saw Gone Girl in its opening weekend, a week ago yesterday. Meaning that I'm a little behind-the-beat in blogging about it. Not that I'm required to, but it is kind of a notable movie.
One of the reasons I was interested to see the movie was to compare it to the book. I read the book after seeing it on the Shirley Jackson Award shortlist, and found it pretty twisty.
As an adaptation, it's not obsessively close like Roman Polanski did with Rosemary's Baby. It is pretty close, though. I had sort of imagined that Nick Dunne would be played by someone like Ben Affleck, and wouldn't you know, he gets the starring role. Now in the original story Amy is seven years older than Nick. In Hollywood as it is, that's just not going to happen onscreen, sad to say. My educated guess is that Affleck is supposed to be playing younger than his 41-42 years, but not substantially younger than Rosamund Pike's character.
The story could be called feminist or misogynist, I guess. It's not my job to worry about labels like that. Men are largely ineffectual, though. The big villain in the film - not saying who - is a woman. But anything good that comes about also seems to happen because of female effort too. It's possible David Fincher just had an idea such a movie would be fun to watch.
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2 comments:
It sounds like David Fincher was right about it being a fun movie to watch. Your review has convinced us to put it on our list when it's available to stream. (We're not likely to go to the movies until the next Avatar comes out.)
You're right that it's a shame that Hollywood has stuck for too long with having female stars be universally young and attractive. They're missing out on some excellent performers if foreign film is anything to judge by.
Avatar is sort of a big-screen enterprise, although for me James Cameron's best movie is still Aliens.
The thing about actresses having to be young is that it by and large cuts out late bloomers who happen to be female. There are male actors who've gone years without attracting much attention and grew into something big. Samuel L Jackson and Bryan Cranston come to mind.
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