Gillian Flynn's novel "Gone Girl" was an instant hit in 2012, and the film adaptation directed by David Fincher started filming in 2013 and hit theaters in late 2014.
The screenwriter is Gillian Flynn himself. Considering that this is her first attempt at screenwriting for film and television, and many novelists are prone to slump in screen creation because they are not adapted to the film medium, it further shows the high efficiency of adaptation.
In many respects, the original novel is a screen-friendly work: a tumultuous plot (complete dramatic structure, many turning points), full of visuals, colloquial succinct dialogue, and a great bestseller in itself. business potential.
Another thing that is easily overlooked is that the film is 149 minutes long; two and a half hours is longer than many suspenseful crime films of the same type, and in many cases only Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters can enjoy such extravagant length. Thanks to director Fincher's huge creative freedom, the duration of the film is less limited, so the plot of the original novel can be preserved to a greater extent, and the adaptation can maintain its original flavor.
Efficient simplification of characters and plot
The screen adaptation of this work basically only needs to do subtraction, that is, the reduction and merger of characters and plots.
The reduction and merger of characters mainly focus on supporting roles, some roles have been cut, and some roles are still in the movie but their roles have been greatly reduced:
1. The two leading police detectives in the novel, Boney and Gilpin, are both female. Boney has only a slightly more role in the film. In the film, Boney is more dominant. As a police representative, her ability to handle affairs is much stronger than that reflected in the novel. Although the role of Gilpin has not been deleted in the film, it is set as a male and has a lower title, but his presence as a deputy is much lower than that of Boney.
2. Nick and Amy's parental scenes were largely omitted from the film. Nick's dementia father made only one appearance, and his mother did not. Amy's parents, Rand and Marybeth, both have reservations; Rand plays a bigger role in the novel but has a much less presence in the movie, while Marybeth plays a bigger role in the movie than the novel, probably because Rand is friendlier to Nick and Marybeth is more Hostile to Nick, can create more dramatic conflict.
3. The lawyer Tanner Bolt is supposed to be an elite white man according to the novel, with a capable black wife, but the wife does not appear in the movie, but he was changed to a black setting.
The simplification of the plot is more reflected in the first act (which is also a common practice in the adaptation of novels to movies), that is, the stage where the film begins to set the story, and some adjustments are made to enhance the sense of the picture, a few examples:
1. In the novel, the police did not find bloodstains when they first came to Nick's house, and then the fluorescent agent was given to detect the blood on the floor in the later chapters. In the movie, the police found bloodstains on the door frame when they first went to Nick's house. This paved the way for a pool of blood that was detected on the floor later, which was more logically natural.
2. In the novel, Nick and Amy's family do not have pets (after all, pets can easily add variables to Amy's conspiracy), but in the movie there is a cat at home. This design not only allows Nick to joke about Amy's dead dialogue, but also It can make him appear caring and make the audience feel good about him as the protagonist, which is a manifestation of Hollywood's "saving the cat" drama skills.
3. In the novel, the trust fund set up by Amy's parents for her is 760,000 US dollars.
After the movie enters the middle section, the main plot points are generally consistent with the novel, and the individual obvious changes are:
1. In the novel, Amy cut himself to get blood when he created a fake kidnapping scene, but Fincher felt that it was not credible enough, so in the movie, he switched to using a pinhole to draw blood, which can better reflect Amy's cold rationality.
2. There is a scene in the novel but not in the movie where Nick is instigated by Asian blogger Rebecca to confess to Amy in a live broadcast at a bar, and Nick miraculously improves his public image temporarily through this live broadcast. In the novel It was a major surprise. The reason why it is not used in the movie is probably because this scene is repeated with Nick's role in an interview with Sharon Schieber later.
3. The house where Desi Collings, the number two pervert in the movie, imprisoned Amy is much more luxurious than the one described in the novel, and there is surveillance that is not explained in the novel. The existence of the surveillance system is mainly to set Amy's intention to pretend to be raped under surveillance a few days before killing Desi. This can provide more evidence for Amy to convince the police that he has been kidnapped, and also strengthen Amy's ruthlessness.
lack of context
The film’s simplification of characters and plots is generally excellent, but the film medium has its own limitations after all: it is difficult to show the macro society (need to enter into specific characters and plots as soon as possible), the status of the protagonist is strengthened (limiting the role of secondary characters), it is impossible to pass the Show more psychological narration and so on.
The original novel has the following core elements:
1. Hunting for a criminal conspiracy;
2. Pessimistic views on marriage;
3. The destructive power of the media and public opinion;
4. The family of origin affects personal growth;
5. The general environment of the aftermath of the economic crisis.
The first three points are fully reflected in the film, but the influence of the family of origin and the background of the economic crisis are only superficially displayed. It doesn't seem to be a hard injury, but it has a great impact on showing the motivation of the characters.
In addition to the marriage life itself (their own reasons), the impact of the original family and the economic crisis environment cannot be ignored for Nick and Amy's marriage crisis.
economic crisis environment
A common view is that marriage is an economic behavior, and the cracks in the marriage between the two people in "Gone Lover" are also very important as an external cause. The story span of the novel is probably from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, and the economic crisis in the United States since 2007 has had an important impact.
Nick lost his job due to the economic crisis, and his whole person became decadent (the movie also has a scene where he played games at home and didn't want to make progress), which made Amy see his unmotivated side, and the contradiction between the two increased. On the other hand, the economic crisis brought Amy's parents to the brink of bankruptcy, and Amy was forced to "lent" most of her trust fund to her parents.
Financially battered, the pair are forced to move back to Nick's hometown in small Missouri, a disaster for Amy, who comes from a wealthy New York family. Two years after moving to Missouri and their five-year marriage crumbling, Amy decides to fix Nick when he finds out he's cheating on him.
The film obviously does not well reflect the external economic factors that prompted Amy to plan the crime. Amy disappeared within 10 minutes of the opening, and the foreshadowing of the small-town drop before that was just some environmental shots about the small town of Missouri in the opening.
Coupled with the director Fincher's own pursuit of refined pictures, the small town in the film does not fully reflect the feeling of a small town and lacks the contrast with the big city. It's hard for the audience to appreciate the desperation of Amy's life in a small town without reading the novel.
family of origin influence
According to the novel, Nick's family of origin was influenced by the fact that his father was misogynistic and was an abusive mother-in-law who didn't complain much. Under the influence of his parents, Nick grew into a person who does not show his emotions easily but has a flattering personality, which is why Nick's reaction was so indifferent when Amy first disappeared, and he was caught and attacked by the police and the media; flattering sex He is very passive in personality, most of the time he is played by Amy in the palm of his hand.
In the novel, Amy's parents have always been very loving, but they used Amy's image to write the Amazing Amy series of fairy tale books. In her opinion, they were using her to make money, and in the process of growing up, Amy always had to be with herself in the fairy tale books. To cope with the society's expectations of her, she was full of resentment and split personality and eventually evolved into a pervert.
Nick's performance in the movie is generally more in line with the original. After all, the character itself is still realistic, and it is perfect to ask Ben Affleck to play: dumb (facial paralysis), with a butt and chin, and the most amazing thing is even a birthday All are the same (different year), which is highly consistent with the description of the novel. Gillian Flynn also said that he was the first choice to play Nick, and he may have written it after him when he wrote the novel. In the end, Affleck also contributed the best performance of his career, and also won the Golden Raspberry Best Redemption Plum Award, reversing the previous bad reviews of his acting skills; from the side, Fincher's ability to guide actors is also underestimated.
The film's presentation of Amy is not as complete as Nick's, and it's not about Pike Chunhua's performance, but more about the narrative. The novel lays out her backstory and psychological monologue relatively completely, so her motives can still be somewhat explained. In the movie, because of the lack of context, Amy is a high-concept existence of "inhuman", and the motivation is basically just because of "perversion".
Surreal Sublimation
Perhaps no matter how you change it, on the screen, the exaggerated postmodern plot of the original novel is destined to be understood as a high-concept spectacle. But it also fits with the story style of most of Fincher's films: more curiosity than reality.
Nick in the novel has a full character arc. With the development of the story, he gradually evolved mentally, and slowly upgraded to the same level as Amy. The end of the novel is an infinite loop of two hearts fighting, with a kind of strange romance.
It's hard for a movie to end with "endless" like a novel, so Gillian Flynn opted for a different approach - Amy just said "this is marriage".
Through this sentence, the author tells the audience that the entire story line of the hunt is a symbolic metaphor about married life.
Elevate the theme simply and clearly. Probably the most successful change to the original novel in the entire film.
Completed December 22, 2021
View more about Gone Girl reviews
