Saw Gone Girl on Monday afternoon in a packed theatre at Yonge and Eglinton during the afternoon. Seems everyone wanted to digest their holiday meal at the theatre on a gloomy day.
This movie is much hyped and won the Box Office this weekend and last. The buzz was all over this one, and yet it seemed to fall prey to all this anticipation.
Here we have the arc of a relationship between Ben Affleck and his Wife. From the beginning at a party where he begins to chat her up, to the the passionate stage and then to marriage and the elements of life. She is the best thing in the movie. The performance by Rosamund Pike is very good with a woman who is many things. Cool, intelligent, calculating, organized, ruthless, beautiful and eccentric. She is a woman with a Plan, and also a Plan B. There are her parents who have made a living off books created around her persona. Then there is the falling apart of the marital relationship and her disappearance. We have the media getting involved, from the Fox news-like commentary where cases are decided based on how someone looks and acts that day. Judgments, assumptions and the life evaluation that no one would ever be ready for. I won’t share anything further on the details of what happens. Suffice it to say that the film takes a premise and then puts it into overdrive. Taking it places that you simply would not have expected. For many that alone will push it over the edge of reason and they will lose their enthusiasm.
I look upon this as a good mirror into the world of today. Doing everything for the cameras and perception. Is this really a search for the “truth”? Or what people “perceive” to be the truth? Does it really matter if there is a difference?
The media, the “public”, the neighbors – all can be manipulated. All can have their attitudes swayed. We are after all a fickle bunch who are quick to make snap judgments and like having neat and clean buckets in which to put people and situations. But the world is rarely black and white, and there is a whole lot of grey. Some people just see that form of reality better than others.
I can see a nomination for Pike here. I do not think that Ben has enough range for a role like this. The casting of Neil Patrick Harris does not seem to make a lot of sense.
I’ll let you decide.
Mondays With Robbie 