“Sans-Noir” Gone Girl (2014)
It is a film about a surface level criminal investigation. Like a guilty man’s alibi its verity exists only to those who would overlook the holes in their bucket as they trudge uphill back to a dry well. Gone Girl’s pacing is break-neck, its dialogue can be sharp at times, and its tone practically bleeds gloom from an unsutured wound; but these features alone do not a noir make! In his scholarly article “Notes on Film Noir”, Paul Schrader insists that true film noir is not built upon checklist chits, but rather it is guided by an unmistakable feel:
Film noir is not a genre… It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film “noir,” as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.
The script was adapted by the original novel’s author, Gillian Flynn and has been pared down to allow film audience’s an even more rapid digestion of the story. I feel this is a clear representation of my own difficulties with the film: the story feels like it is being railroaded over top of us rather than being gracefully unveiled. Often I got the sense that if the pace ever slowed, I’d be allowed time for contemplation and the overall mystique would vanish! “I couldn’t put the book down!” Flynn fans barked at me months before the film’s debut. Here the bond is formed between patrons of the film and lovers of the novel; when you’re simply going along for the ride, turning page after page, hungrily lapping up whatever clues are thrown to you, you assume the role of the spectator and not the investigator. Perhaps this is what Flynn and director David Fincher would like all along though, perhaps it is actually a social experiment geared to transform normally rational individuals into the impulsive, judgmental witch-hunters that they watch on the screen. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “You buy the ticket, you take the ride.” But the film’s depicted news coverage is not reality, and some discerning individuals in the theater would rather not be lumped in with the “I go whichever way the lead take me” characters that constitute both the media coverage and the spellbound viewers at home. These individuals are lead to ask discerning questions and in turn depart from frustrating personalities like ‘investigative reporter’ Ellen Abbott (Missi Pyle).
“You know I’ve never found that to be true.” Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens) dismissively scoffs at her partner at the suggestion that “the simplest answer is often the solution”. But do your homework, Rhonda you don’t sound like a real homicide detective! Most murders are solved by canvassing witnesses and linking seemingly unrelated confessions, not by scratching for forensics and burying one’s self in case files. And if this local investigation is truly classified as a “redball” (a department wide fiasco), then it sure doesn’t feel like one. Author David Simon identifies ten vital tropes for murder investigation in his non-fictive work, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, two of which ring especially true in regard to Gone Girl.
Rule #1: Everyone lies. Murderers lie because they have to; witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to; everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop.
Rule #2: The victim is killed once, but a crime scene can be murdered a thousand times.
One thing quickly learned from Simon’s book is that murder is usually quite inglorious, and rarely is it complicated. Detective Boney unwittingly contradicts herself when explaining to Nick Dunne (Ben Afleck) that “A dead body indicates a murder which makes us look inside the house. A lack of a body indicates a kidnapping which makes police look outside the house.” If the detective indeed subscribes to such a simple mantra, how then could she later seriously argue that simplicity is the bane of unfettered discovery?
I believe the film is meant to be dizzying in its presentation, but somehow it lacks the home-spun grind of true noir. Noir films carry an affable sloppiness where this film featured ignoble moments of frustrating carelessness (“Aren’t you just glad your wife is home?”). Like the SHOWTIME Network series Dexter it almost feels too manufactured, too orchestrated to even fall under the less choosy banner of “neo-noir” (If we take Schrader at his word that true “noir” was merely a period passed). Its structural gears are like a fuel-efficient luxury sedan: far too greased and noiseless to ever be held alongside a diesel-exhaust-belching classic-clunker like The Big Sleep. It may be called a “gritty flick” but in actuality it is too slick, too disingenuous to ever capture the earnest sloppiness of true film noir. If Philip Marlow defends his noir status with the tactics of the seasoned but nonetheless local attorney, then Nicholas Dunne simply gloats as he dials his big-city snake-oil-lawyer to argue on his behalf. Fincher has shown us in the past that he is more than capable of producing neo-noir (Morgan Freeman’s knife-throwing meditation method couldn’t be more noir if he were throwing shadows at shadows!) Fincher’s films all have a certain look to them that resonates throughout his body of work, and though Se7en and Fight Club may look similar one is almost inarguably neo-noir and one is not. While this film’s methods of investigation fall into stern questioning, its depictions of the story-hungry 24-hour news media and the effects they can have on contemporary marriage serve as a welcome distraction. Gone Girl is pulpy, melodramatic, and as Schrader puts it “hardboiled”, but make no mistake: film noir it ain’t!
