Movie: Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)
I missed, the first time I watched Gone Girl, the fairly important detail that Amy's diary is completely made up (thought it was just the final pages and that Nick really beat her up). I was so giddy by the mid-film reveal - set up as a crime procedural, the film just straight up reveals its mystery barely an hour into the plot - that I couldn't concentrate on all the details. But those details only make the film better, bolder and cheekier. It's essentially a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a woman getting away with lying about being abused, making us root for her in the process. It's a testament to its greatness that it has not become a rallying cry for men's rights activists, incels and other assorted internet trash.
It is also a testament to its great thorniness that it has been embraced by many feminists. In another world it could have been the first entry in an Amazing Amy superhero franchise in which Amy manipulates mediocre men into matching her greatness. It's also a rare contemporary Hollwyood film that explores the fantasy of escaping an unhappy marriage from a female perspective without patronizingly victimizing her. And, there would be no film without women. Everything that happens in the film is a direct or indirect consequence of a woman's act, including Amy herself getting robbed. (and including the fact that it's based on Gillian Flynn's book, who has also adapted the screenplay) But despite all that, the film has very little actual sympathy for Amy (or for Nick). If there is any female hero, it's detective Boney. I don't know Kim Dickens very much, but she may well give the most unfairly overlooked performance of the decade.
I'd argue that Fincher views both Amy and Nick here in the same way he views the Winklevoss brothers in The Social Network. They are entitled assholes who know how to sound smart to climb the social ladder in New York and who mistake that for sophistication and having high standards. Of course they see the Missourians as a bunch of dumb rubes who will never reach their heights. And of course Fincher absolutely revels in their downfall, directing these scenes with the same cheery cynicism as the rowing boat sequence in The Social Network. It is quite relevant that Amy outsmarts both Nick and the filthy rich Desi, but finds her betters in the 'hicks' renting her a home. Despite the fact that Fight Club has indeed (and wrongly) become a rallying cry for the aforementioned internet trash, Fincher has always been on the side of the little guy and deeply critical of those with power and (unearned) wealth. Even at his most frustrating - obsessively shooting close-ups of electric appliances - that has always remained true.
Few recent movies have presented American popular media with such contempt, arguing they exploit sex, murder and crime for no other reason than to sell themselves as righteous gatekeepers of moral values. In the process they also create impossible standards for good behavior, making authentic experiences almost impossible. Nobody in the film, again apart from detective Boney and to a lesser extent Go, is truly interested in morality and justice. All everyone is doing, all the time, is obsess and think about their appearance, or obsess and think about how other people appear. And so the ultimate joke of the film - it is very funny - is that Nick and Amy save their marriage by accepting the fake versions of themselves. All of this makes Gone Girl not just Fincher's best film (by a mile as far as I'm concerned) but perhaps also the best film Paul Verhoeven never made. At least he has never managed anything as subversively perverse as the final 15 minutes of this film. God knows he's tried.
