Gone Girl (book 2012) By Gillian Flynn (movie 2014)

If ever one needed proof of the old adage “the book is always better" then Gone Girl is Exhibit-A, but more on that later.

 

A close friend of mine recommended I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I picked the book up a few days later, but then had a difficult time getting into it. The story begins with girl (Amy) meets boy (Nick), they date, fall in love, get married, have a wonderful life in New York – yawn, yawn, yawn. By page 75, I called my friend and told her I doubted I’d finish the book. She insisted I continue. I did.

 

Being careful not to provide a spoiler, a brief summary of Gone Girl is that after the marriage, things start to fall apart. Amy and Nick both lose their jobs. Her parents suffer a financial meltdown. His mother is diagnosed with cancer, and they move to his hometown in Missouri to care for her. 

   

Then Amy disappears, and the book turns into a complete page-turner.

 

The author, Gillian Flynn (a Chicagoan by-the-way), writes the book as a chapter narrated by Amy, alternating with a chapter narrated by Nick. The format works perfectly, hence the “two sides to every story” tag line.

Movie Trailer 

 
While the book works perfectly, the movie does not.

 

The problem with the movie isn’t with the actors. Rosamund Pike nails the Amy character. Lisa Banes who plays the minor role of Amy’s mother is superb, as is another minor character, Nick’s lawyer, played by Tyler Perry. The problem is with the character Nick, the male lead. More accurately, the problem is the movie’s director (David Fincher) totally left out an important aspect of Nick’s character: the fact that Nick rapidly learns to hold his own in this story. Ben Affleck’s portrayal of Nick is okay, but it’s difficult to turn in an award winning performance when the director doesn’t understand the storyline.

 
An additional problem is that the back and forth, and numerous diary flashbacks, that work so well in the book, are confusing in the movie.
 

In the director’s defense, there is a lot of material in Flynn’s book. Even with a movie that is 2 hours and 29 minutes long, much of the story (both characters and settings) had to be cut, making for some very difficult decisions. The biggest loss among the things cut or downplayed was a more in-depth treatment of the Missouri town where the story takes place. Fincher’s interpretation of the town folk as rubes is shallow and just plain wrong.

 

And returning to that old adage: skip the movie, read the book.