GONE GIRL

(David Fincher, 2014)

Something in the caustic, blistering satire of Gillian Flynn's novel is beautifully suited to Fincher's gifts; this film is slick and dark and funny and utterly entertaining and something about it feels effortless.
It has a pleasing ambivalence about each of its characters - Affleck nicely plays his protagonist, Nick Dunne, as variously a schmuck, a cheat, a bore, and a smug yuppie. The structure means that we partly see him through the eyes of the titular girl, his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike), as she recounts their meet-cute and perfect courtship in her diary, and partly as he suffers through the aftermath of her disappearance, when he is demonised by the media and becomes hunted and paranoid. As such, he is sympathetic - Affleck remains a charming presence - but is believably flawed and human. Amy is similarly complex, and Pike doesn't shy away from portraying her spoiled little rich girl vanity alongside her wit and intelligence. The supporting cast is just as richly populated with nuance and authentic tics - Carrie Coon and Kim Dickens play perhaps the two strongest characters as, respectively, Nick's twin sister and the detective working the case, both of whom seem cynical about everything the world throws at them.
Fincher textures the whole thing with that beautiful darkness he can sprinkle throughout a film. Here it is suburbia that is depicted with a clinical detachment, its dark corners illuminated by his camera, and the final act reveals this film as a devastating and hilarious critique of modern marriage, slickly hidden inside a twisty thriller, and drolly entertaining throughout.

ZODIAC

(David Fincher, 2007) The film where Fincher grew up. A tense and engrossing study of obsession and failure, a whodunnit which doesn't really care whodunnit and a policier which meticulously depicts the procedural elements of a serial killer investigation at a crucial point in the 20th century, Zodiac is Fincher's best film. Its also the first where he allows the narrative and themes and characters to take priority over his directorial pyrotechnics. The pyrotechnics, the insane virtuosity, they're still there, they're just better integrated into the film, best seen in a series of remarkable crane shots, and an overhead tracking shot which is breathtaking but doesn't ever pull the viewer out of the story. Instead Fincher focuses on the details and in the process builds a convincing portrait of a time and place as much as he focuses upon the Zodiac investigation. The texture of Zodiac is thick with America in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with the mainly unseen and unremarked upon social and political upheaval of the era. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhal) works as a political cartoonist and we glimpse some of his work in passing, but he is more interested in Zodiac, as if seeking escape from his own job. His obsessive investigation gives the film its baggy structure, with extended episodes focusing more on the Official Investigation by various Police Detectives and Departments, and a few chilling recreations of the crimes themselves. We hear suggestions of the schism in American society on a talk radio programme. There are references to the pop culture of the times, too. Detective Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) was the real-life basis for Bullitt, and he is seen attending a special police screening of that other classic portrayal of the SFPD, Dirty Harry (which was partly inspired by the Zodiac case). The soundtrack is full of the music of the period, most of it put to perfect use, in particular Donovan's ever-creepy Hurdy-Gurdy Man - which I don't think I'll ever be able to hear again without thinking of this film, a signal of how well it was used. But mainly we are buried under the details of the case, just like the films protagonists. Each of them is ruined by it, defeated by its blind alleys and dead-ends. Fincher's film is heavy with scenes depicting men talking in offices and on telephones, and yet it manages to build and maintain suspense for two and a half hours. In this it recalls Alan J Pakula's magisterial All the Presidents Men (the deep-procedural aspect also suggested the influence of The Wire, always a good thing). The photography by Harris Savides is frequently beautiful, but it also vividly captures the lighting in the open plan offices of the SF Chronicle and the police department, contributing to the flat, banal tone which suggests the crushing repetitive dullness of the work these men are involved in. David Shire's subtle score is a direct reference to the films of the 70s Zodiac apes. Its few scenes of outright suspense are confidently, expertly staged and handled by Fincher, proving that he is best when holding back. The cast - illuminated by turns from Robert Downey Jr, Anthony Edwards and Elias Koteas - is uniformly great. Most impressive of all, perhaps, is the sidelong way this approaches a Big American subject, its narrative steadily circling a few characters lost in a maze of detail and crumbling because of their inability to find a way out. The film is about the case but also about technology, how we feel about it and how it fails us (there are many references to mimeographing and early fax machines and a key plotpoint hangs upon the expertise of a handwriting specialist), and about the evil that seemed almost to hang in the air in the culture of the 1970s. It possesses a strange kind of density which reminded me of the work of Don DeLillo and Christopher Sorrentino's novel "Trance" (both of which investigate a similar era in US history). The density comes from the aggregation of detail, the depth of characterisation, and the polymathic tangents the narrative constantly threatens to follow before doubling back. All the while, we never lose sight of the evil at the centre of the story, which seems to baffle Fincher just as much as it baffles his characters. In seemingly keeping his focus so narrow, Fincher, together with screenwriter James Vanderbilt, is able to paint a panorama of a 20 year slice of history, and do it beautifully. This is a Great Film.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

(David Fincher, 2011)

An object lesson in what a strong director can bring to questionable source material.
Stieg Larsson's mega-bestseller and the literary phenomenon it sparked - the rest of the Millennium trilogy - were posthumously published, which may well account for the repetitive sloppiness of much of the writing. The Swedish adaptation from 2009, directed by Niels Arden Oplev, plays like a tv movie, stylistically mundane, dramatically plodding, enlivened only by Noomi Rapace's performance as Lisbeth Salander.
Salander is the key to the success of the books. A truly iconic lead character, excitingly modern (a bisexual goth-punk hacker-biker) yet with an uncomplicated moral worldview and the aggressive personality required to take on the evils which cross her path, any filmmaker who gets her right has a good chance of making a watchable film. Well, watchable isn't enough for Fincher. Currently operating at something like peak level, in that few other directors on earth so consistently excel on a scene-by-scene basis, he (alongside screenwriter Steve Zaillian) elevates and inflates this parlor detective story into a dark, classy thriller, full of incidental pleasures.
They also get Salander right. Much of that is down to strong work from Rooney Mara, who makes her a little more vulnerable than she is in the books or in Oplev and Rapace's version. Only a little vulnerable, however. Her righteous vengeance upon her rapist case worker and final heist are infused here with an almost mischievous sense of fun. She enjoys getting her own back, it seems, and is unapologetic about her looks or difficult personality. The slight, slow thaw we see in her here is down to her relationship with her research partner, and she communicates much behind Salander's consistent poker face.
Daniel Craig is solid as Larsson's glamourised self-portrait, Mikael Blomkvist, coasting along on his now-unquestionable leading man qualities, and displaying a good ability to let us see him figuring things out. The rest of the cast - mainly a solid roster of experienced British thespians - are effortlessly convincing, with the (somewhat jarringly) single Scandinavian Stellan Skarsgaard as good as ever.
The real star here, of course, is Fincher. Evoking the chilly Swedish winter with an enviable, thrillingly textured feel for place and mood, he makes his film unfailingly beautiful without it ever seeming ostentatious or without any effect upon his storytelling. The soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross helps a lot, a series of atmospheric pieces, hammering percusision, and queasy synth effects combining nicely with Fincher and Director of Photography Jeff Cronenweth's sublimely lit and composed frames.
It may be a largely dazzling experience, then, but there are flaws here. The running time is grotesquely extended for such a disposable thriller, the almost exploitative nastiness present in passages seems damagingly at odds with the theme of "Men Who Hate Women" (the Swedish title of the novel), and there is the unmistakeable whiff of Murder She Wrote or even Scooby-Doo in tired scenarios like the killer explaining his own motivations and methods to his intended victim (and, obviously the audience).
Worst of all, Fincher is such a great talent, a project like this feels like a waste of him. Hopefully he'll do something riskier and more interesting next time..