The 52nd New York Film Festival, which continues through Oct. 12, has already screened two films that have industry brass across the board weighing in on the chances of award nominations. The first film is the highly styled “Maps to the Stars” (U.S. premiere) by director David Cronenberg and starring Julianne Moore in a performance that’s raw, jagged and primed for a Best Acting nod. The well-crafted thriller also stars John Cusack as a new age therapist with a secret so dark that demons might flinch at its unveiling.
The other film that critics are singing praises about is the very fine “Gone Girl,” by director David Fincher and based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel about a rocky marriage that flirts with homicide as a solution to conflict. Flynn also wrote the masterful screenplay.
On his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) reports that his stunning wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under intense pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick’s portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon, his twisted lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick kill his wife?
The screenplay supports the outstanding performance that each cast member delivers, and the ending is so well inserted into the fabric of the film that it slices clean to the heart of the matter, and to the uncomfortable question we all might ask of our significant other: “Who exactly are you, what are you thinking and how in the world did I end up here?”
The brilliantly cast film also stars Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry and Carrie Coon.
We were invited to the press conference after the NYFF screening and here are a few choice bits about the taunt thriller.
On changing several parts of the story to fit a more cinematic structure, Flynn said she “had no qualms about the massive adjustments, which included changing the entire ending.” She adds that when she was creating the screenplay, she had the director firmly in mind.
“When I was writing ‘Gone Girl,’ there were certain parts where I thought, ‘David Fincher would really kill this scene, injecting the necessary malice.’”
The banter between Fincher and actor/director Affleck, who earned a Best Picture win for “Argo,” was an unexpected treat, and Affleck rolled with the loving jabs as only a pro would and could. And of course there were many cracks about Affleck turning into the Dark Knight soon. In Pike’s words, “Ben was becoming Batman before my eyes. By the time we were in the shower, I was with Batman!”
Pike’s performance as the grossly underestimated and complicated Amy will give many viewers pause and force many others to ponder their own levels of morality. Harris is going to surprise everyone in a completely new avatar of, in his own words, “ a giant creep,” which he just nailed completely.
After the festival screening, as we waited for the cast to assemble on the New York stage, it was so eerily silent that you could almost hear the proverbial “pin drop,” caused, no doubt, by the shocking ending. Flynn is a writers’ writer, and Fincher knows how to honor all of the craftsmanship that goes into making such a thoroughly entertaining cinematic experience.
The last act climax is so smoothly delivered that you don’t “see” or “feel” the whammy!
Perry (who plays Affleck’s lawyer, Tanner Bolt) summed it up best, we think, when he said, “David [Fincher] has his own way of telling the story. Whether you’ve read the book or not, I think it’s going to surprise people.”
“Gone Girl” opens Oct. 3.
