{"id":263,"date":"2014-10-08T14:51:44","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=263"},"modified":"2014-10-08T14:57:44","modified_gmt":"2014-10-08T21:57:44","slug":"begone-girl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollywood-nobody.com\/blog\/?p=263","title":{"rendered":"BEGONE, GIRL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MV5BMTk0MDQ3MzAzOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNzU1NzE3MjE@._V1_SX640_SY720_\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the beginning was the word.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Well\u2026the book, actually.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not a very good book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But a very, very popular book.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sensation, in fact.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t wait to read it. I was familiar with Gillian Flynn\u2019s work and was hoping that she would realize the promise of her early novels\u2014that she would turn out to be the real thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her first book, Dark Places<\/em>, was dazzling\u2014its opening, unforgettable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a meanness inside me, as real as an organ. Slit me at my belly, and it might slide out, dark and meaty, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it. It\u2019s the Day blood. Something\u2019s wrong with it. I was never a good little girl, and I got worse after the murders.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Libby Day, the sole survivor of her family\u2019s slaughter by her older brother Ben, grows up hard, selfish, friendless\u2014a mass of sharp, lacerating edges. But in her effort to clear her brother of the crime, she not only puts herself at risk; she unearths her own buried humanity. And that, aside from the clean, hard style, the complex characterizations and the innovative structure, is the wonder of her story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

With Dark Places<\/em> and its successor Sharp Objects<\/em> (whose protagonist is a profoundly disturbed cutter), Flynn staked her claim to alienated, deeply dysfunctional characters in whom she ultimately uncovered some core of humanity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The books were not perfect. They were marred by some artifice in the construction of their complex plots\u2014an abuse of the reader\u2019s willing suspension of disbelief, but they were great reads with something important to say about the human condition.<\/p>\n

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Then came Gone Girl<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In it she took things a step further, and in doing so, stepped off a cliff, creating characters so dysfunctional, so utterly lacking in humanity that it\u2019s impossible to care about them or even believe in them, fashioning a plot so complicated and contrived that it defies credibility, writing a novel so nihilistic that it is about, quite literally, nothing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And the movie fashioned from this emptiness?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Slavishly faithful to the book.<\/p>\n

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The screenplay was, after all, written by Flynn herself.<\/p>\n

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A condensation of her novel, it is the perfect vehicle for David Fincher, her cold-hearted partner in crime, whose vision of life is summed up beautifully by Gwyneth Paltrow\u2019s head in a hat box.<\/p>\n

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His direction is brilliant\u2026and icy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Easy to admire.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hard to enjoy.<\/p>\n

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The cinematography is practically a parody of the brilliant, brooding work of Gordon Willis in the Godfather<\/em> films\u2014so dark it\u2019s virtually impossible to distinguish interior from exterior, day from night.<\/p>\n

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Ben Affleck, always more dynamic behind the camera than in front of it, so underplays his role he\u2019s almost not there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rosamond Pike is simply not sensual or seductive enough to be credible in the part she\u2019s called upon to play.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is only Tyler Perry, quite different from his counterpart in the book, who manages to bring color and life to his character.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To those of you who buy the ending of both book and film, I want to say this: I can make you one heck of a deal on this bridge I\u2019ve got for sale.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I finished Flynn\u2019s novel and Fincher\u2019s movie wondering what is going on in the world today\u2014a world where people seem obsessed with charismatic gangsters, ruthless meth dealers, charming serial killers, amoral ad men, and assholes befriending assholes in stories about nothing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It is a question I\u2019ll try (and probably fail) to answer in my next post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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