“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” —Mark Twain the father of American literature
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THE FESTIVAL Festival Theme Schedule Location
THE DIRECTOR Biography Filmography Interviews
THE FILMS Seven The Game Fight Club Zodiac Gone Girl
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THE DARK MAZE
THE THE FESTIVAL
THE DARK MAZE
About
The Dark Maze is a film festival that explore dark human nature and enjoys the aestheticization of Panic and suspense through David Fincher's films. The Festival will start from September 22 to 25 in 2020. The address is L.A. Live that is an entertainment complex in the South Park District of Downtown Los Angeles, California. It is adjacent to the Staples Center and Los Angeles Convention Center.. The festival will introduce David Fincher’s dark aesthetics series, explore the director's stories and exciting information when making films. I hope you enjoy this film festival.
Detective, he'd
die
of
shock
much
right
now
pain and
give or take..., and he still has hell to look forward to. Good night.
8
if
you were to shine a ashlight in his eyes.
suffering
as
anyone
WI've
He's experienced
encountered,
about as
THE FESTIVAL “It “Er nest Hemming way said,
‘The world
is
impressive
is
to
see
good
a
man
and
f e e d i n g
wor th saving.’
off his emotions.”
I believe in the second par t.”
California, tell your people to stay away.
Stay away now, don't - don't come in here.
W h a t e v e r
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y
o
u
h
e
a
r, stay away! John Doe has the upper hand!
THE DARK MAZE
Schedule
September 22
September 23
16:00-16:40 Opening Introduce the contents of the festival, briefly describe the significance of the activities, and warm-up activities before the official start of the festival.
16:00-18:10 Film_The Game After a wealthy banker is given an opportunity to participate in a mysterious game, his life is turned upside down when he becomes unable to distinguish between the game and reality.
17:00-19:10 Film_Seven Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his motives.
18:30-20:50 Film_Fight Club An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soapmaker form an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.
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THE FESTIVAL
September 24
September 25
16:00-18:40 Film_Zodiac In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree.
16:00-18:30 Film_Gone Girl With his wife’s disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it’s suspected that he may not be innocent. 18:50-19:30 Ending The end of film festival, the organizer made a speech and thanked the guests. Present event souvenirs.
19:00-21:00 Salon There are snacks and drinks for the guests to exchange their movie experience and chat with each other.
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THE DARK MAZE
Location L.A. Live L.A. Live is an entertainment complex in the South Park District of Downtown Los Angeles, California. It is adjacent to the Staples Center and Los Angeles Convention Center.
L.A. Live was developed by Anschutz Entertainment Group, Wachovia Corp, Azteca Corp, investment firm MacFarlane Partners with tax deferments paid by Los Angeles taxpayers. It cost approximately US$2.5 billion to build. The architectural firm responsible for the master plan and phase two buildings was Baltimorebased RTKL Associates. L.A. Live has 5,600,000 square feet (520,257 m2) of ballrooms, bars, concert theatres, restaurants, movie theaters, and a 54-story hotel and condominium tower on a 27-acre site. The complex became AEG home and the Herbalife headquarters in 2008.
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THE FESTIVAL
Features
Microsoft Square
Grammy Museum
Microsoft Square is a 40,000-square-foot (3,716 m)open-air plaza that serves as the central meeting place for L.A. Live. The Square provides a broadcast venue featuring giant LED screens as well as the red carpet site for special events. Microsoft Square hosted the first WWE SummerSlam Axxess event on the weekend beginning August 22, 2009, leading up to the 2009 SummerSlam event on August 23 at Staples Center. On June 24, 2010, the Square was the location for the official carpet premiere of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
On May 8, 2007, it was announced that the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences would establish a museum dedicated to the history of the Grammy Awards. The museum opened on December 2008 for the Grammy Awards 50th anniversary. It consists of four floors with historical music artifacts.[9][10] It has featured a number of exhibits, including the John Lennon Songwriter Exhibit that was open from October 4, 2010 to March 31, 2011.
Microsoft Theater
Hotel
Microsoft Theater ( previously the Nokia Theatre) is music and theatre venue seating 7,100, while Novo (previous Club Nokia) is an intimate venue with a seating capacity of 2,300 for live music and cultural event the theatre has hosted the ESPY Awards since 2008. The first scheduled event held at thet Microsoft Theatre was a concert featuring Eagles and The Dixie Chicks on October 18, 2007. National events hosted since have included the American Music Awards on November 18, 2007.
The centerpiece of the district is a 54-story, 1001room 2 hotel hybrid tower, constructed above the parking lot directly north of the Staples Center. Designed by Gensler and built by Webcor Builders, the skyscraper contains both an 879 room JW Marriott hotel on floors 3 through 21 and a 123-room RitzCarlton hotel on floors 22 through 26, floors 27 through 52 hold 224 Residences at the Ritz Carlton condominiums, and the tower’s architectural design evolve from “geometric pattern of glittering, blue-tinted glass.
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THE DARK MAZE
THE THE DIRECTOR
Biography
THE DARK MAZE
There’s a requisite paranoia. There’s fear–fear of failure–and an overwhelming urge to be liked. With only a handful of credits tucked under his belt, wunderkind prodigy David Fincher became one of the most celebrated artists to scale the heights of Tinseltown during the late '90s and early 2000s. Although Fincher has met with some derision early on, as the director of the critically excoriated Alien 3 in 1992, his work on Seven three years down the road won him critical approval and unanimous acceptance across the industry, and marked only the beginning of an influential, splashy career. He born on May 10, 1962, Fincher originally hailed from Denver. Like his predecessors, the infamous Kenneth Anger, he has stepped behind a camera at the tender age of eight particularly inspired by the work of George Lucas, reeled in his first major industry job ten years later at Lucas' own Industrial Light and Magic. After his four-year stint at ILM, during which he work on such productions Return of the Jedi (1983) and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Fincher helmed commercials and music videos for the likes of Aerosmith, Paula Abdul, and Madonna. Following the disappointment of Alien 3, his directorial debut, the film maker received Andrew Kevin Walker's screenplay for Seven, and almost immediately signed on to helm
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it; it reached cinemas in late 1995. A noirish, grimly atmospheric crime thriller starring Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt as detectives following the gruesome trail of a serial killer (Kevin Spacey), innumerable critics hailed the picture as one of the most innovative and unsettling of the decade, duly established its director as one of the Hollywood's most exciting and unusual new talent. Relentlessly grim and oozing with rancid cynicism, this A-budget feature stray so far from escapist fare typically primes a film for mainstream box-office success that many insiders anticipated limited appeal, but Fincher's stylistic panache and inhibition-defying gutsiness turned Seven into a runaway smash, on both commercial and critical fronts. Because the acclaim surrounding Seven made relatively unknown Fincher one of Hollywood's hottest young directors, considerable anticipation and buzz surround his follow-up, The Game. Released in 1997 starring Michael Douglas as a soulless attorney who becomes caught up in the sinister. Kafkaesque machinations of titular scheme, the work boasted almost as much feel-bad cynicism as Seven, but failed to resonate with audiences or critics who found it hopelessly convoluted and shallow. The disappointment
THE DIRECTOR
of The Game, however, did little to dimmed the excitement that accompanied Fincher’s next project, a screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s apocalyptic, of-the-moment novel Fight Club. Featuring a sterling cast that included Edward Norton, Helena Bonham Carter, and Seven collaborator Pitt, the 1999 film -- about a couple of depressed urban loners (Norton and Pitt), who vent their aggressions in ultra-violent street brawls -- was easily one of the most publicized of the decade no less dynamic than either of Fincher's prior films. Fueled in equal measure by stylistic audacity and the spirit of disenfranchised machismo the Fight Club failed to become the incendiary hit both its fans and detractors predicted, although its pre-millennial nihilism influenced directors for years to come and garnered a passionate cult fan base. In spite of Fight Club, expectations were high for Fincher's next project, Panic Room, a thriller starring Jodie Foster, Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, and Dwight Yoakam, and penned by the prolific David Koepp (Bad Influence, Carlito's Way). As pure an exercise in suspense as could be expected from the director, the film ratcheted up tension as it told the tale of a newly single Manhattan mother and her diabetic daughter.
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THE DARK MAZE
Filmography
1995
1997
1999
Seven
The Game
Fight Club
Taking place in a nameless city, Seven follows the story of two homicide detectives tracking down a sadistic serial killer who chooses his victims according to the seven deadly sins. Together they trace the killer’s every step, all the while moving closer to a gruesome fate neither of them could have predicted.
Nicholas Van Orton is a very wealthy San Francisco banker, even spending his birthday alone. Returns and gives Nicholas a card giving him entry to unusual entertainment provided by something called Consumer Recreation Services. Giving in to curiosity, Nicholas visits CRS and all kinds of weird.
A nameless first person narrator attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. Together the two men spiral out of control and engage in competitive rivalry for love and power. he must accept an awful truth that Tyler may not be who he says he is.
Writer: Andrew Kevin Walker
Writer: John Brancato, Michael Ferris
Writer: Chuck Palahniuk, Jim Uhls
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey
Starring: Michael Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger, Sean Penn
Starring: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf
Release Date: September 22, 1995
Release Date: September 12, 1997
Runtime: 127 min
Runtime: 129 min
Box Office: 327.3 million USD
Box Office: 109.4 million USD
Release Date: October 15, 1999 Runtime: 139 min Box Office: 100.9 million USD
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2007
2014
Panic Room
Zodiac
Gone Girl
Meg Altman and her daughter Sarah have bought a new home in New York. On their tour around the mansion, they come across the panic room. A room so secure, that no one can get in. The criminals know where she is, and what they require the most in the house is in that very room.
A serial killer in the San Francisco Bay Area taunts police with his letters and cryptic mail. We follow the investigators and reporters in this lightly fictionalized account of the true 1970’s case as they search for the murderer, the movie’s focus is the lives and careers of the detectives and newspaper people.
Nick and Amy Dunne are a couple living in a small town in Missouri. Nick calls the authorities when she goes missing but something is off about his behavior. Is he sad or distraught enough? Nick is battling a media frenzy the people believe his innocence is dwindling by the minute.
Writer: David Koepp
Writer: James Vanderbilt, Robert Graysmith
Writer: Gillian Flynn
Starring: Jodie Foster, Kristen Stewart, Forest Whitaker
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo
Starring: Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris
Release Date: March 29, 2002
Release Date: March 2, 2007
Release Date: October 3, 2014
Runtime: 158 min
Runtime: 139 min
Runtime: 149 min
Box Office: 197.1 million USD
Box Office: 84.8 million USD
Box Office: 369.3 million USD
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THE DIRECTOR
2002
Interviews
THE DARK MAZE
David Fincher interview: ‘I was looking for something I’d never seen before’ September 21 2014 By Joshua Rothkopf
Detective, he'd
die
of much
shock
right
now
pain and
if
suffering
you were to shine a flashlight in his eyes. as
anyone
WI've
He's experienced
encountered,
about as
give or take..., and he still has hell to look forward to. Good night.
You’re going to have to help me out here, because I don’t want to spoil anything. Happy marriage doesn’t seem like a subject you’d be interested in, and clearly Gone Girl’s not about one either.
“Er nest Hemming way said, good
and
‘The world wor th saving.’
I was looking for something I’d never seen before. The book talked about narcissism in a really interesting way—the way we concoct not only an ideal version of ourselves in hopes of seducing a mate, but in hopes of seducing someone who is probably doing the same thing. [Laughs] Gillian was looking at what it is that erodes the foundation of marriage.
is I believe in the second par t.”
The book reads like a satire of marriage, a marriage that only two very savvy self-aware people could have. Gillian Flynn also wrote your script. Gillian is astutely aware of what it is that she’s doing. At the same time, she’s a popcorn-munching, sitting-in-the-third-row, craningher-neck movie fan. The fact that she had written this elaborately marbled novel initially gave us all pause: You know, would she be able to slaughter her darlings? But she didn’t just tree-trim it was a deforestation!
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“It
is
impressive
to
see
a
man
f e e d i n g
off his emotions.”
California, tell your people to stay away.
So would you say the job of a director is interpretive?
W h a t e v e r
y
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r, stay away! John Doe has the upper hand!
Especially after The Social Network, you were launched into a place of Oscar nominations and critical guild awards. Are awards important to you?
It’s adaptive. You’re doing an adaptation. You’re saying, “I understand what you mean on the page.” And you’re moving around tectonic elements that already exist in a novel that done an inordinate amount of thinking about.
It’s totally dishonest to say that one doesn’t appreciate acknowledgment from people who know how difficult it is to do this stuff. But we are not curing cancer. We’re just hopefully making entertainment and if we can elevate it, even a little bit, that’s all good. But it’s tricky. Would I rather spend my time doing something else than sitting uncomfortably sweating in a tuxedo, being scrutinized for my gratitude? Yeah, there are a lot of other ways that one can spend four hours of one’s life that don’t cause you the same dyspepsia.
This idea of playing the media—or getting played by it—is threaded through many of your films, not just Gone Girl and Social Network, but as far back as Seven. I wonder if you’re scared by the power of the media. I don’t know that I see it as a source for good any longer. I can’t say that when I go to get my teeth cleaned, I do not pick up a People magazine. I’m not above that. But I don’t think the media in Gone Girl is the antagonist. It’s there to complicate the story. I’m talking about the people who are saying, “We’ve got to have a scandal. We have to have something happening.” That’s an animal you can’t prepare for.
How do you handle that personal attention?
There are very few things as collaborative as the making of a film. Hollywood is culpable for having creating the mythology that everyOr tame. thing is done to very exacting standards, and nobody makes a move forward without knowing the effect. But the fact of the matter is, it’s It’s like message boards. You don’t want to engage—you don’t want more like couture fashion: You’re making a one-off. And it’s got to go to go there. It’s like a second grader going: “I don’t like your shoes.” down the runway and enough people have to clap and take a picture What do I care? You are in second grade. What difference does it of it, and sell a $100 million worth of tickets. make? You’re entitled to your opinion. But I’m really not going to go Going from the large scale to the small, I’m a huge fan of your music home and change. videos. Some of them are now considered classic. Has making them That’s what a grown-up would do. affected your aesthetic? It’s hard!
It comes from wherever you’re raised. I didn’t go to film school. MTV was my film school. Instead of having to pay $30,000 a year for the master’s degree in directing, I got to get paid and try a lot of stuff out. Remember, when I started, the promise was: Don’t worry, your name’s not going to be on it. I wanted to play. And I wanted to learn from my own mistakes. I am working on television show right now about this very phenomenon: 22-year-olds were getting awarded song and budget on a Monday, shooting the video by that weekend and then postproducing on the next weekend.
What about this whole celebrity-nude-photo thing? As somebody who’s never wanted to take picture of himself naked, the impetus to generate the material is beyond me. But Gillian Flynn is interested in that stuff. She’s interested in earnest God-fearing people who are curious as to what’s happening in the house at the end of the cul-de-sac where the shades are drawn.
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THE DIRECTOR
Stay away now, don't - don't come in here.
THE DARK MAZE
It sounds exhilarating.
I wanted them to look good—and I’m not just talking about cosmetically. I wanted this investment to seem smart. I didn’t work with very many people I didn’t have respect for.
Exhausting and exhilarating. I don’t think you will ever see another multinational media conglomerate get out of the way of what is a 22 When you’re talking about the Madonna’s years old wants to say about whatever—and “Express Yourself” video, you’re talking about then put that shit on the air, 24 hours a day, to an essential piece of the legend. You are be pounded into the cerebellums of people delivering her persona—some might say hungry for new cultural outlet. I don’t think you’re making the persona. that that will ever happen again. When you’re making a music video, the person that you’re That whole thing began with her saying to shooting the close-up of is paying for it. Not me, “You know [Fritz Lang’s] Metropolis?” the record company. The record companies Yeah, I know Metropolis. [Laughs] I was like: pretended they were paying for it, but it was Back off, man. We’re doctors. It was a very really coming out of royalties. I was always interesting time and place, and I’m not Mr. very sensitive to it. The people that I worked Nostalgia. It was truly the inmates running with were investing in me, and at the same the asylum. And a lot of people got rich—I time, I was investing in them. wasn’t one of them.
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You continue to have an affinity for music and musicians. Gone Girl’s score composers, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are seem to understand your intent very well. How does that collaboration work? I’ve played them a two-hour-and-50-minute version first cut of the movie. Afterward, we walked outside. Trent was smiling Atticus never smiles, but Trent was, which is never a good thing because he only smiles when he’s getting away with something. He is a little incorrigible in that way. So I said,“What did you think?” He goes, “That’s nasty, that movie is mean!” I thought, Good, good. They also did The Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You must give them specific notes about what you’re going for, tonally.
You must be aware of your reputation as a perfectionist. Is that something you’re defensive about? I’m defensive about the word perfectionist, because I think it’s bandied around, like when people say edgy. They’re too fucking lazy to actually come up with a real word.Perfectionist is a polite way of saying compulsive. And I don’t think I’m a perfectionist. That’s the term people use who have no idea how movies get made. This is a ballet with no rehearsal. You can’t rehearse a shoot. You have to come in on the day and perform that dance. And there are so many things that can come between you and the intent. Did you experience that on the Gone Girl set? When Tyler Perry showed up, he was like: “Are you kidding? We’re going to do another one? Why?” We’re not doing another one.
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THE DIRECTOR
I said, “I want you to give me your version of spa music. These sort of endless loops that play when you’re getting a shiatsu. Because I know it’ll be disquieting. And I know it’ll take root somewhere in my spine and upset me for weeks on end.” My movie is about the good husband, the good wife, the good neighbor, the good Christian, the good American, the good patriot. I want music that’s there to soothe and assuage. And that’s what they came back with.
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THE DARK MAZE
because anything was wrong. We’re doing another one because I think that there’s one mistake that will be made somewhere down the line once everyone gets bored that will be more like human behavior than anything being offering up now. If I can get you as an actor to forget your real middle name, I think you are going to stumble onto something that’s going to make you go: Oh! It’s always the best take when an actor starts falling face-first.
I’ve heard it in jest.
I didn’t have a great experience the first two times with Twentieth Century Fox. On my first movie [Alien3], I was expecting a collaboration. And I don’t feel that way now. I feel like I’m hired to make a movie. And on Gone Girl, we got to make exactly what we wanted. I’m very honest about the movie I intend to make. I talk about that stuff in advance. I want the people who are paying for the film I’m lucky enough to make to understand, because you are managing expectations. That was something that I didn’t have coming out of music videos. I had it in a three-and-a-half-minute envelope, I didn’t have it in a two-and-a-halfhour envelope.
Do other filmmakers loom in your head at this point?
Are surprised with where you are now in your filmmaking?
I was probably in my forties when I first became comfortable. I started directing when I was 21. Let’s put it this way: I don’t trust anybody who doesn’t go to bed at night feeling like a fraud. Feeling like: Tomorrow is the day I get the call and they rescind my ability to do this thing I love so much that I would do it for free. There’s a part of you that is always waiting to be found out especially when your job is to walk into gigantic a room with 90 people staring at you slack-jawed said, “What do you want to do next?” Before I could walk on a stage, I had to go throw up. And then you walk out and you do the best you can to look like you’re in charge.
Not when you watch rushes, because you’ve been through 30 meetings about: What is the effect of this necktie? Why would he wear a watch like that? And the blood isn’t going to be on any clothing, it’s going to be on skin, so it can’t be so translucent. You’ve had all these discussions, so no—you shouldn’t be surprised.
How do you feel when people use the term Fincheresque? Have you heard that?
Your early movies were hard births. Now how does it work, 30 years down the line?
Maybe more generally, then, with your art. I always find that when it’s clean and clear, when we can articulate it well and everybody gets on the same page, it causes me a real sigh of relief, because you say, “All this hard work can actually make some thing the way we all talked about it.” And that’s… [Whistles appreciatively] If that didn’t happen ever you
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would just want to shoot yourself in the face. But then there are times when the weather’s fucking horrible, dolly grip took the wrong exit and is 45 minutes late, and you get off to the bad start. And you sit there and you hammer at the scene and you try to make it better more deft more witty. Yeah, if you’re putting as much time effort into answering all those questions and were ending up with a product that bore no resemblance to what you were trying to accomplish, it would be incredibly depressing.
THE DIRECTOR
Directing ain’t about drawing a neat little picture and showing it to the cameraman. I didn’t want to go to film school.
THE DARK MAZE
THE THE FILMS
THE DARK MAZE
— RETIRED AND ACTIVE INVESTIGATORS Director Writer Starring Release Date Runtime Box Office
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David Fincher Andrew Kevin Walker Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey September 22, 1995 127 min Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $327,311,859
As preparation for his traumatic scene in the interrogation room, Leland Orser would breathe in and out rapidly, so that his body would be overly saturated with oxygen, giving him the ability to hyperventilate. He also did not sleep for a few days, in order to achieve his character's disoriented look. Brad Pitt fell while filming the scene in which Mills chases John Doe in the rain. Pitt’s arm went through a car windshield, requiring surgery. The accident was worked into the script. Coindentally, the original script called for Detective Mills to be injured during the sequence. All of John Doe’s books were real books, written for the film. They took two months complete, and cost $15,000. According to Morgan Freeman, two months is about the time it would take the police to read all the books. David Fincher said that he wanted someone who was incredibly skinny, around 90 pounds, to play Victor. When Michael Reid MacKay auditioned, he weighed 96 pounds. Fincher gave him the part, and jokingly told him to lose some more weight. Much to his surprise, MacKay had lost another six pounds when filming started.
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THE FILMS
Trivia
Plot
THE DARK MAZE
Soon-to-retire detective William Somerset is partnered with short-tempered but idealistic David Mills, who has recently moved to the city with his wife, she confides to Somerset that she is pregnant and has yet to tell Mills, as she is unhappy with the city and feels it is no place to raise a child. Somerset symthizes, having had similar situation with his exgirlfriend many years earlier, and advises her to tell Mills only if she plans to keep the child. Somerset and Mills investigate a set of murders inspired by seven deadly sins: a man forced to eat until his stomach burst. Representing gluttony, and defense attorney killed after forced to cut a pound of flesh from himself, representing greed. Clues at the murder scenes lead them to a suspect’s apartment, where they find a third victim, a drug dealer and child molester, strapped to a bed, emaciated but alive, representing sloth. Daily photographs of the victim, taken over a year, show the crimes were planned far in advance. The detectives use library records identify a John Doe and track him to his apartment. Doe flees and Mills gives chase. Doe turns to hold Mills gunpoint for a moment before escaping. The apartment contains hundreds of notebooks revealing Doe’s psychopathy, as well as a clue to another murder or case.
The detectives arrive too late to stop a man forced by Doe at gunpoint to kill a prostitute by raping her with a custom-made, bladed strap-on, representing lust. The following day, they attend the scene of fifth murder, model whose face has been mutilated by Doe; she was given the option to call for help and live disfigured, or commit suicide by taking pills, representing pride. As Somerset and Mills return to the police station, Doe turns himself in, covered in the blood of an unidentified victim. Doe offers to take the detectives to the final two victims and confess to murders, but only under the specific terms, or he will plead insanity. Somerset is wary about it. The detective follow Doe’s directions to the remote desert location. Then, a delivery van approaches. Mills holds Doe at a gunpoint while Somerset intercepts the driver who has been instructed to bring box to them. Doe begins to taunt Mills by telling him that how envious he is of his life with Tracy. Somerset opens the box and, in a sudden panic, warns Mills to stay back. Doe then says that his sin was envy, and that Tracy died as a result of this; he also states that her head is in the box, and that she was pregnant. Despite Somerset’s warnings, Mills shoots Doe, completing Doe’s plan by representing wrath. Polices converge and take the devastated Mills away.
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THE FILMS
“Ernest Hemingway once wrote, ‘The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”
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Hemming way said,
‘The world
is
good
and
wor th saving.’
I believe in the second par t.”
THE DARK MAZE
“Er nes
Review
Roger Ebert
It’s almost always raining in the city. Somerset, the veteran detective, wears a hat and raincoat. Mills, the kid who has been transferred into the district, walks bare-headed in the rain as if he'll be young forever. On their first day together, they investigate the death of a fat man they find face-down in a dish of pasta. On a return visit to the scene, the beams of their flashlights point here and there in the filthy apartment, picking out a shelf lined with dozens of cans of Campbell's Tomato Sauce. Not even a fat man buys that much tomato sauce.
The enigma of Somerset’s character is at the heart of the film, and this is one of Morgan Freeman’s best performances. He embodies authority naturally; I can’t recall him ever playing a weak man. Here he knows all the lessons a cop might internalize during years spent in what we learn is one of the worst districts of the city. He lives alone, in what looks like a rented apartment, bookshelves on the walls. He puts himself to sleep with a metronome. He never married, although he came close once. He is a lonely man who confronts life with resigned detachment.
This grim death sets the tone for David Fincher's "Seven," one of the darkest and most merciless films ever made in the Hollywood mainstream. It will rain day after day. They will investigate death after death. There are words scrawled at the crime scenes; the fat man's word is on the wall behind his refrigerator: Gluttony. After two of these killings Mills realizes they are dealing with serial killer, who intends every murder to punish one of the Seven Deadly Sins. This is as formulaic as an Agatha Christie whodunit. But "Seven" takes place not in the genteel world of country house murders, but in the lives of two cops, one who thinks he has seen it all and the other who has no idea what he is about to see. Nor is the film about detection; the killer turns himself in when the film still has half an hour to go. It's more of a character study, in which the older man becomes a scholar of depravity and the younger experiences it in an pitiable and personal way. A hopeful quote by Hemingway was added as a voice-over after preview audiences found the original ending too horrifying. But the original ending is still there, and the quote plays more like a bleak joke. The film end with Freeman's "see you around." After the devastating conclusion, the Hemingway line is small consolation.
When he realizes he’s dealing with the Seven Deadly Sins, he does what few people would do, and goes to the library. There he looks into Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It isn’t that he reads them so much as that he references them for viewers; it is often effective in a horror film to introduce disturbing elements from literature as atmosphere, and Fincher provides glimpses Gustav Dore’s illustrations for Dante, including the famous depiction of a woman with spider legs. Somerset sounds erudite as he names the deadly sins to Mills, who seems to be hearing of them for the first time. What’s being used here is the same sort of approach William Friedkin employed in “The Exorcist” and Jonathan Demme in “The Silence of the Lambs.” What could become a routine cop movie is elevated by the evocation of dread mythology and symbolism. “Seven” is not really a very deep or profound film, but it provides the convincing illusion of one. Almost all mainstream thrillers seek first to provide entertainment; this one intends to fascinate and appall. By giving the impression of scholarship, Detective Somerset lends a depth and significance to what the killer apparently considers moral
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Stay away now, don't - don't come in here.
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h
e
a
r, stay away! John Doe has the upper hand!
California, tell your people to stay away. “It
is
impressive
to
see
a
man
f e e d i n g
off his emotions.”
From its sensory assaulting opening credits, through to its desolate and very shocking finale, Seven goes for the gut, and like an insidious gnawing in the pit of your stomach, it never lets up.
Somerset and Mills represent established fiction formulas. Mills is the fish out of water, they’re an Odd Couple, and together they’re the old hand and the greenhorn. The actors and the dialogue by Andrew The five murders investigated by the partners provide variety. The killer has obviously gone to elaborate pains in planning and carrying Kevin Walker enrich the formulas with specific details and Freeman’s precise, laconic speech. Brad Pitt seems more one-dimensional, or them out -- in one case, at least a year in advance. His agenda in the film’s climactic scene, however, must have been improvised recently. perhaps guarded; he’s a hothead, quick to dismiss Freeman’s caution and experience. It is his wife Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow) who brings a “Seven” draws us relentlessly into its horrors, some of which are all the more effective for being glimpsed in brief shots. We can only be note of humanity into the picture; we never find out very much about her, but we know she loves her husband and worries about him, and sure of the killing methods after the cops discuss them--although a shot of the contents of a plastic bag after an autopsy hardly requires she has good instincts when she invites the never-married Somerset over for dinner. Best to make an ally of the man her husband needs more explanation. Fincher shows us enough to disgust us. and can learn from. Watching the film, we assume the Tracy character The killer obviously intends his elaborate murders as moral statement. is simply a place-holder, labeled Protagonist’s Wife and denied much He suggests as much after we meet him. When he’s told his crimes dimension. But she is saving her impact until later. Thinking back will soon be forgotten in the daily rush of cruelty, he insists they will through the film, our appreciation for its construction grows. be remembered forever. They are his masterpiece. What goes unexplained is how, exactly, he is making a statement. His
Detective, he'd experienced
die
of
shock
much
33
right
now
if
you were to shine a flashlight in his eyes.
He's
about as
pain and
suffering
as
anyone
WI've
encountered,
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victims, presumably guilty of their sins, have been convicted and executed by his actions. What’s the lesson? Let that be a warning to us?
statements. To be sure, Somerset lucks out in finding that the killer has a library card, although with this killer, thinking back, you figure he didn’t get his ideas in the library, and checked out those books to lure the police.
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THE DARK MAZE
Writer Starring Release Date Runtime Box Office
David Fincher John Brancato, Michael Ferris Michael Douglas, Deborah Kara Unger, Sean Penn September 12, 1997 129 min Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $109,423,648
Trivia David Fincher originally planned to make The Game before Se7en (1995). But once Brad Pitt became available for the latter, Fincher shelved this film until Se7en (1995)’s filming was done. Jodie Foster was originally signed to play Michael Douglas’s sibling in the film. However, Foster changed her mind and wanted to appear as Douglas’s daughter instead. Douglas and director David Fincher were very opposed to this change so part go to Sean Penn instead. Foster promptly sued PolyGram to the tune of $ 54.5 million even though her Egg Pictures was one of the film’s production companies. The matter was fortunately settled out of court. Douglas who is the personal friend of Foster said that it didn’t seem right for him to play Foster’s father, given that there is only 18 years age difference between the two. Ironically, Douglas HAS already played Foster’s father - he did so in the Disney film Napoleon and Samantha (1972) at the start of both of their careers. Nicholas’s “San Francisco” home is actually historic Filoli Mansion, 25 miles south of San Francisco in Woodside, California. The plains gravel forecourt of the mansion was made to look more like a wraparound driveway by addition of the fountain, which was constructed of lightweight foam. The interior shots of the kitchen were made in the original time-worn kitchen, which is displayed on tours but no longer used. The kitchen’s state of repair is not good, which partially accounts for the very dim lighting used in the kitchen scenes. The scenes in which the walls were defaced with the graffiti was done by tacking up lightweight graffiti-painted foamcore boards over the wood paneling. All of the scenes at the mansion were completed in one day. In searching for the perfect engine sound for Nicholas’ 7 series BMW, one member of the sound editing team located in Sausalito, CA actually borrowed his high school friend’s Dinan modified BMW 540 for half day.
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THE FILMS
Director
THE DARK MAZE
Plot Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy investment banker, is estranged from both his ex-wife and his younger brother, Conrad. And he is haunted from having seen his father commit suicide on the latter’s 48th birthday. For he’s own 48th birthday, Conrad presents Nicholas with an unusual gift—a voucher for a “Game” offered by a company called Consumer Recreation Services (CRS). Conrad promises that it will change his life. Nicholas is doubts about CRS but he meets fellow bankers who enjoyed the Game. He goes to CRS’s offices to apply and is irritated by the lengthy and time-consuming series of psychological and physical examinations required. He is later informed that his application has been rejected. Soon Nicholas has
begins to believe that his business reputation, finances, and safety are at risk. He has encounters a waitress, Christine appears to have been endangered the Game. Nicholas contacts the police, but they find the CRS offices abandoned. Eventually, Conrad appears at Nicholas’s house and apologizes, claiming he’s come under attack by CRS. With no one else to turn to, Nicholas finds Christine’s home. He discovers she is a CRS employee and her apartment was fake. Christine says they are being watched. Nicholas attacks a camera, and armed CRS personnel swarm the house and fire upon them. Nicholas and Christine are forced to flee Christine tell him CRS has drained his bank accounts using the tests
36
to guess his passwords. Panicking, Nicholas calls his bank, gives a verification code and is told his balance is zero. Just as he begins trust Christine, he realizes she has drugged him. As he loses consciousness, she admits she is part of the scam and he made a fatal mistake saying his verification code. Nicholas wakes entombed alive in cemetery in Mexico. He sells his gold watch to return to the US finds his mansion foreclosed, most of his possessions removed, and is told Conrad has been committed to a mental health
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institution due to a nervous breakdown. He retrieves a hidden gun and seeks the aid of his ex-wife. While talking with her and apologizing for his neglect and mistreatment, he discovers Jim Feingold, the CRS employee who conducted his tests, is an actor working in television advertisements. He locates Feingold and forces him to find CRS’s real office, whereupon he takes Christine hostage. Nicholas demands to be taken to the head of CRS. Attacked by CRS guards, Nicholas takes Christine to the roof and bars the door. The guards begin cutting through the door. Christine realizes Nicholas’s gun is not a prop and is terrified. She frantically tells him it is a part of the Game, his finances are intact, and his family and friends are waiting on the other side of the door. He refuses to believe her. The door bursts open, and Nicholas shoots the first person to emerge—Conrad, bearing an open bottle of champagne. Devastated, Nicholas leaps off the roof, falls through a glass ceiling and miraculously survives as he lands on a giant air cushion. He is greeted by Conrad, who is alive, and the rest of the people from the Game. Conrad tells him this is his birthday present. Later, he asks “Christine” out for dinner.
“The game is tailored specifically to each participant. Think of it as a great vacation, except you don’t go to it, it comes to you.”
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Review
Roger Ebert
THE DARK MAZE
PLAYERS Soon everything starts to fall apart. His pen leaks. His briefcase will not open. Wine is spilled on him in a restaurant. He is trapped in an elevator. The level of chaos rises. He finds himself blackmailed, his bank accounts are emptied, he wanders like a homeless man, he is trapped inside a cab sinking in a bay, he is left for dead in Mexico. Of course, many of the physical details of what happens to him are implausible or even impossible, so what? The events are believable in the sense that events can be believed in a nightmare: You could hardly worry about how horror has been engineered when you're trapped inside it.
The opening scenes of "The Game'' show Michael Douglas as a rich man in obsessive control of his life. The movie seems to be about how he is reduced to humility and humanity or maybe that was just a trick on him. The movie is like a control freak's worst nightmare. The Douglas character, named Nicholas Van Orton, was surrounded by employees who are almost paralyzed by his rigid demands on them. "I have an Elizabeth on line three,'' says one secretary, then a second later adds, "Your wife, sir.'' "I know,'' he says coldly. We have the feeling that if the second secretary had not spoken, he would have replied, "Elizabeth who?'' His underlings are in bad situations. It is, in fact, his ex-wife; at age 48, Van Orton lives alone in the vast mansion where his father committed suicide at the same age. Orton birthday evening consists of eating a cheeseburger served on the silver tray and watching CNN.
The mounting campaign of conspiratorial persecution is greeted by Van Orton with his usual style of cold contempt and detachment: He knows all the angles, he thinks, and has foreseen all the pitfalls, and can predict all the permutations but he finds he is totally wrong. Even those few people he thinks he can trust (including a waitress played by Deborah Kara Unger or is she a waitress?) maybe double agents. There’s even the possibility the Game is a front for a well-planned conspiracy to steal his millions. Michael Douglas, who is superb at playing men of power (remember his Oscar-winning turn as Gordon Gekko in "Wall Street") is reduced to a stumbling, desperate man on the run (remember his unemployed engineer in "Falling Down").
Van Orton's younger brother Conrad visits him and announces the birthday present: "The Game,'' which is "sort of an experiential Book of the Month Club.'' Operated by a shadowy outfit named Consumer Recreation Services, the Game never quite declares in its rules or objectives, but soon he finds himself in its grasp, and his orderly life has become unmanageable. "It will make your life fun again,'' he is promised but that's not quite how he sees it.
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WANTED "The Game,'' written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris, is David Fincher's first film since "Seven," and projects the same sense of events being controlled by invisible manipulation. This time, though, there's an additional element: Van Orton is being broken down and reassembled like the victim of some cosmic EST program. And it is unclear to him and to us, whether the Game is on the level of fraud, or perhaps spinning out of control.
play cold, and he can play angry. He is also subtle enough that he never arrives at an emotional plateau before the film does, and never overplays the process of his inner change. Indeed, one of the refreshing things about the film is that it stays true to its paranoid vision right up until what seems like the very end--and then beyond it, so that by the time the real ending arrives, it's not the payoff and release as much as a final macabre twist of the knife.
THE FILMS
The movie's thriller elements are given an additional gloss by the skill of the technical credits and the wicked wit of the dialogue. When Van Orton's brother asks, "Don't you think of me anymore?'' Orton shoots back, "Not since family week at rehab.'' And when his ex-wife asks if he had a nice birthday, he answers, "Does Rose Kennedy have a black dress?'' The film's dark look, its preference for shadows, recalls "Seven'' and also Fincher's "Alien 3." The big screen reveals secrets and details in dark corners; on video, they may disappear into the murk. Like "Seven,'' the plotting is ingenious and intelligent, and although we think we know arc of the film (egotist is reduced to greater humility and understanding of himself), it doesn't progress in a docile, predictable way; for one thing, there is the real possibility that the Game is not an ego-reduction program, but a death plot. Douglas is the right actor for the role. He can play smart, he can
39
THE DARK MAZE
Director
David Fincher
Writer
Chuck Palahniuk (novel), Jim Uhls (screenplay)
Starring
Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf
Release Date
October 15, 1999
Runtime
139 min
Box Office
Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $101,186,553
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Trivia After the copyright warning, there is another warning on the DVD. This warning is from Tyler Durden and is only there for a second. “If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of it is useless fine print is another second off your life.
Author Chuck Palahniuk first came up with the idea for the novel after being beaten up on a camping trip when he complained to some nearby campers about the noise of their radio. When he returned to work, he was fascinated to find that nobody would mention acknowledge his injuries instead of saying such commonplace things “How was your weekend?” Palahniuk concluded that the reason people reacted this way is that if they asked him what had happened, a degree of personal interaction would be necessary, and his workmates simply didn’t care enough connect with him on personal level. It was his fascination with this societal ‘blocking’ which became the foundation for the novel.
The original “pillow talk” the scene had Marla saying “I want to have your abortion”. When this was objected to by Fox 2000 Pictures President of Production Laura Ziskin, David Fincher said he would change it on the proviso that the new line couldn’t be cut. Ziskin agreed and Fincher wrote the replacement line, “I haven’t been fucked like that since grade school”. When Ziskin saw the new line, she was even more outraged and asked for the original line to be put back, but, as per their deal, Fincher refused. To prepare for their roles, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt took basic lessons in boxing, taekwondo and grappling, and also studied hours of UFC programming. Prior to principal photography, Pitt also visited a dentist to have the cap on his chipped tooth removed.
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THE FILMS
Don’t you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can’t think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all who claim it? Do you read everything you’re supposed to read? Do you think everything you are supposed to think about? Buy what you are told you should want? Out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive. If you don’t claim humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned... Tyler”
Plot
THE DARK MAZE
The unnamed Narrator is an automobile recall specialist who is unfulfilled by his job and possessions, he finds catharsis by posing as a sufferer of testicular cancer and other afflictions in support groups, curing his insomnia. His blissdisturbed by another impostor, Marla Singer. The two agree to split which groups they attend. On a flight home from a business trip, the Narrator meets the soap salesman Tyler Durden. The Narrator returns home to found that his apartment has been destroyed by an explosion. Deciding against asking Marla for help, he calls Tyler, and they meet at the bar. Tyler says the Narrator is beholden to consumerism. In the parking lot, he asks the Narrator to hit him, and they begin a fistfight.
We’re all part of the same compost heap. We’re all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
The Narrator moves into Tyler’s home, a large dilapidated house in an industrial area. They have further fights outside the bar, which attract growing crowds of men. The fights move to the bar’s basement where the men form Fight Club, which routinely meets for the men to fight recreationally. Marla overdoses on pills and telephones the Narrator for help; he ignores her, but Tyler goes to her apartment to save her. Tyler and Marla begin a sexual relationship, much to the Narrator’s irritation. Tyler warns the Narrator never to talk to Marla about him. A Narrator blackmails his boss for his company’s assets to support Fight Club and quits his job.
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Soon, Fight Clubs begin to form across the country. Tyler recruits their members to new anti-materialist and anti-corporate organization, Project Mayhem, without the Narrator’s involvement. The group engages in subversive acts of vandalism violence, increasingly troubling the Narrator. After the Narrator complains that Tyler has excluded him, Tyler leaves the house. The Narrator realizes that Tyler caused the explosion at his apartment. When a member of Project Mayhem, Robert Paulson, is killed by police during botched sabotage operation, the Narrator tries to halt the project. He follows a paper trail to cities Tyler has visited. In city, a Project Mayhem member addresses the Narrator as the “Mr. Durden.” Confused, the Narrator calls Marla discovers that she also believes he is Tyler.
The Narrator blacks out. When he returns to the house, he uncovers Tyler’s plans to erase debt by destroying a buildings that contain credit card records. He apologizes to Marla and warns her that she is in danger but she tired of his contradictory behavior. He tries to warn the police but the officers are members of the Project. He attempts to disarm the explosives in a building, but Tyler subdues him albeit the surveillance cameras display that Tyler is absent and that The Narrator is actually hurting himself. With Tyler holding him by gunpoint in the top floor, The Narrator realizes it, as he and Tyler are the same person, he is holding the gun. He fires it into his own mouth, shooting through his cheek, that causes Tyler to collapse since he thinks he has committed suicide. Project Mayhem members kidnapped Marla to the building.
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THE FILMS
“You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.
Review
Roger Ebert
THE DARK MAZE
"Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up. Sometimes, for variety, they beat up themselves. It's macho porn -- the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for years, in which eroticism between the sexes is replaced by all-guy locker-room fights. Women, who have had a lifetime of practice at dealing with little-boy posturing, will instinctively see through it; men may get off on the testosterone rush. The fact that it is very well made and has a great first act certainly clouds the issue. Edward Norton stars as a depressed urban loner filled up to here with angst. He describes his world in dialogue of sardonic social satire. His life and job are driving him crazy. As a means of dealing with his pain, he seeks out 12-step meetings, where he can hug those less fortunate than himself and find catharsis in their suffering. It is not without irony that the first meeting he attends is for post-surgical victims of testicular cancer, since the whole movie is about guys afraid of losing their cojones.
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These early scenes have a nice sly tone; they’re narrated by the Norton character in the kind of voice Nathanael West used in Miss Lonelyhearts. He’s known only as the Narrator, for reasons later made clear. The meetings are working as a sedative, and his life is marginally manageable when tragedy strikes: He begins to notice Marla (Helena Bonham Carter) at meetings. She’s a “tourist” like himself--someone not addicted to anything but meetings. She spoils it for him. He knows he’s a faker, but wants to believe everyone else’s pain is real. On an airplane,
still another turn. A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Soze syndrome. What is all this about? According to Durden, it is about freeing yourself from the shackles of modern life, which imprisons and emasculates men. By being willing to give and receive pain and risk death, Fight Club members find freedom. Movies like “Crash” (1997), must play like cartoons for Durden. He’s a shadowy, charismatic figure, It’s at about this point that the movie stops able to inspire a legion of men in big cities being smart and savage and witty, and turns to descend into the secret cellars of a Fight to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonClub and beat one another up. stop violence ever filmed. Although sensible people know that if you hit someone with an ungloved hand hard enough, you’re going to end up with broken bones, the guys in “Fight Club” have fists of steel, and hammer one another while the sound effects guys beat the hell out of Naugahyde sofas with Ping-Pong paddles. Later, the movie takes
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THE FILMS
he has another key encounter, with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a man whose manner cuts through the fog. He seems able to see right into the Narrator's soul, and shortly after, when the Narrator's high-rise apartment turns into a fireball, he turns to Tyler for shelter. He gets more than that. He gets in on the ground floor of Fight Club, a secret society of men who meet in order to find freedom and self-realization through beating one another into pulp.
THE DARK MAZE
Only gradually are final outlines his master plan revealed. Is Tyler Durden in fact leader of men with a useful philosophy? “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything,” he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche displays on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He’s a bully Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they’re reduced to pathetic cultists. Issue them black shirts sign them up as skinheads. Whether Durden represents hidden aspects of male psyche is a question the movie uses as the loophole but is not able to escape through, because “Fight Club” is not about its ending but about its action. Of course, “Fight Club” itself does not advocate Durden’s philosophy. It is a warning against it, I guess; one critic I like says it makes “telling point about the bestial nature man and what can happen when numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy.” I think it’s the numbing effects of movies like this that cause people go to a little crazy. Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they’ll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights reather
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than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden’s moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them. Lord knows the actors work hard enough. Norton and Pitt go through almost as much physical suffering in this movie as Demi Moore endured in G.I. Jane, and Helena Bonham Carter creates feisty chain-smoking hellcat who is probably so angry cause none of the guy think having sex with her is as much fun as a broken nose. When you see good actors in project
That film was also about a testing process in which a man drowning in capitalism (Michael Douglas) has the rug of his life and pulled out from under him and has to learn to fight for survival. I admired “The Game” much more than “Fight Club” because it was really about
its theme, while the message in “Fight Club” is like bleeding scraps of Socially Redeeming is a good director (his work includes “Alien 3,” one of the best-looking bad movies I have gent thriller). With “Fight Club” he seems to be setting himself some kind of a test how far over the top can go? The movie visceral and hard-edged, with the levels of irony and commentary aboves and below the action. If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film. But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks
47
message is that’s not what most audience members will get.“Fight Club” is thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can’t wait to get on again.
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like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering. The movie was directed by David Fincher and written by Jim Uhls, who adapted the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. In many ways, it’s like Fincher’s movie “The Game”(1997) with the violence cranked up for teenage boys of all ages.
THE DARK MAZE
— SUSPECTS
— RETIRED AND ACTIVE INVESTIGATORS
Director Writer Starring Release Date Runtime Box Office
David Fincher James Vanderbilt (screenplay), Robert Graysmith (book) ake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo March 2, 2007 157 min Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $84,785,914
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— FAMILY MEMBERS
Trivia
The Zodiac case was re-opened after the release of the film. The shooting script was 200 pages long to prevent any problems with length that such a long script might be cause, director David Fincher decided to ask his cast members to speak faster. The only real comment that Robert Graysmith said about finished screenplay was, “God, now I see why my wife divorced me.” The producers hired a private investigator to track down the real life Zodiac survivor, Mike Mageau. The murder victims’ costumes were meticulously recreated from forensic evidence that was lent to the production. Tree had to be helicoptered in to the Lake Berryessa location, as the area had changed substantially since 1969, and David Fincher wanted it to resemble the murder site as closely as possible.
— WITNESSES
David Fincher, screenwriter James Vanderbilt, and producer Bradley J. Fischer spent 18 months conducting research into the Zodiac murders. They interviewed witnesses, family members, suspects, retired and active investigators, the only two surviving victims, and the mayors of San Francisco and Vallejo.
— THE ONLY TWO SURVIVING VICTIMS
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THE FILMS
The Zodiac’s first confirmed attack - the murders on Lake Herman Road - was excluded from the film, since there were no surviving victims to corroborate details. The creators thus decided to open the film with the 4th of July murders, considered to be the Zodiac’s second double murders.
THE DARK MAZE
Plot
On July 4, 1969, an unknown man attacks Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau with a handgun at a lovers' lane in Vallejo, California. One month later, the San Francisco Chronicle receives encrypted letters written by the killer calling himself the "Zodiac", who threatens to kill dozen people unless his coded message containing his identity is published. Political cartoonist Robert Graysmith, who correctly guesses that his identity is not in the message, is not taken seriously by crime reporter Paul Avery or the editors and is excluded from the initial details about the killings. When the newspaper publishes letters, a married couple deciphers one. In September, the killer stabs two law student Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard at Lake Berryessa in Napa County; Shepard dies two days later. At a bar, Avery makes fun of Graysmith before they discuss the that letters. Graysmith interprets the letter, which Avery finds helpful and Avery begins sharing information. One of Graysmith's insights about the letters is that the Zodiac's reference to man as "the most dangerous animal of them all" is a reference to the film The Most Dangerous Game, which features the villainous Count Zaroff, a man who hunts live human prey. Two weeks later, San Francisco taxicab driver Paul Stine is shot and killed in the city's Presidio Heights district. The Zodiac killer mails pieces of Stine’s bloodstained shirt to the
“Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it’s not true.” 50
Armstrong transfers from the San Francisco Police homicide division and Toschi is demoted for supposedly forging a Zodiac letter, he continues his own investigation, profiled in the Chronicle, and gives a television interview about the book he is writing about the case. He begins receiving phone calls with heavy breathing. As his obsession deepens, Graysmith loses his job and his wife Melanie leaves him, taking their children. Graysmith learns that Allen lived close to Ferrin and probably knew her and that his birthday matches the one Zodiac gave when he spoke to one of Belli's maids. While circumstantial evidence seems to indicate his guilt the physical evidence, such as fingerprints and handwriting samples, do not implicate him. In December 1983, Graysmith tracks Allen to a Vallejo Ace Hardware store, where he is employed as a sales clerk; they stare at each other before Graysmith leaves. Eight years later, after Graysmith's book Zodiac has become a bestseller, Mageau identifies Allen from a police mugshot. Final text indicates that Allen died before he could be questioned and that the case remains open.
In 1978, Avery moves to the Sacramento Bee. Graysmith persistently contacts Toschi about the Zodiac murders, and eventually impresses him with his knowledge of the case. While Toschi cannot directly give Graysmith access to the evidence, he provides names in other police departments where Zodiac murders occurred.
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Chronicle along with a taunting letter. San Francisco police inspectors Dave Toschi and his partner Bill Armstrong are assigned the case by Captain Marty Lee, work closely with Vallejo’s Jack Mulanax and Captain Ken Narlow in Napa. Someone claiming to be Zodiac continues to send the taunting letters and speaks on the phone with lawyer Melvin Belli on television talk show hosted by Jim Dunbar. In 1971, Detectives Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax question Arthur Leigh Allen, a suspect in the Vallejo case they notice that he wears a Zodiac wristwatch, with the same logo used by the killer. However, handwriting expert insists that Allen didn’t write the Zodiac letters, even though Allen is said to be ambidextrous. Avery receives letter threatening his life; becoming paranoid, he turns to drugs alcohol. He shares information with the Riverside Police Department, angering Toschi and Armstrong. The case's notoriety weighs on Toschi, who is unable to sit through a Hollywood film, Dirty Harry, loosely based on the Zodiac case.
Review
Roger Ebert
'Zodiac" is the "All the President's Men" of serial killer movies, with Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist. It's not merely "based" on California's infamous Zodiac killings, but seems to exude the very stench and provocation of the case. The killer, who was never caught, generously supplied so many clues that Sherlock Holmes might have cracked the case in his sitting room. But only a newspaper cartoonist was stubborn enough, and tunneled away long enough, to piece together a convincing case against a man who was perhaps guilty.
Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Ruffalo plays him not as a hotshot but as a dogged officer who does things by the book cause he believes in the book. Edwards’ character, his partner, is more personally worn down by the sheer vicious nature of the killer and his taunts. At the San Francisco Chronicle, although we meet several staffers, the key players are Ace reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr., bearded, chain-smoking, alcoholic) and editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), these characters are real and indeed the film is based on Graysmith’s books about the case. I found the newspaper office intriguing in its accuracy. For one thing, that is usually fairly empty, and it was true on a morning paper in those days that the office began to heat up closer to deadline Among the few early arrivals would have been the cartoonist, who was expected to work up a few ideas for presentation at the daily news meeting, and the office alcoholics, perhaps up all night, or already starting their recovery drinking. Yes, reporters drank at their desks 40 years ago, and smoked and smoked and smoked.
THE DARK MAZE
The film is a police procedural crossed with a newspaper movie, but free of most of the cliches of either. Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years, and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful. I could imagine becoming hopelessly mired in the details of the Zodiac investigation, but director David Fincher (“Seven”) and his writer, James Vanderbilt, find their way with clarity through the murk. In film with so many characters, the casting by Laray Mayfield is also crucial; like the only eyewitness in the case, we remember a face once we’ve seen it.
Graysmith is new on the staff when the first cipher arrives. He like the curious new kid in school fascinated by the secrets of the big boys. He doodles with a copy of the cipher, and we think he’ll solve it, but he doesn’t. He strays off his beat by eavesdropping on cops and reporters, making friends with the boozy Avery, and even talk his way into police evidence rooms. Long after the investigation has cooled, his obsession remains, eventually driving his wife to move herself and their children in with her mom. Graysmith seems oblivious to the danger he may be drawing into his home, even after he appears on TV and starts hearing heavy breathing over the phone. What makes “Zodiac” authentic is the way it avoids chases,
The film opens with a sudden, brutal, bloody killing, followed by others not too long after -- five killings the police feel sure Zodiac committed, although others have been attributed to him. But this film will not be a bloodbath. The killer does his work in the earlier scenes of the film, and then, when he starts sending encrypted letters to newspapers, the police and reporters try to do theirs. The two lead inspectors on the case are David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). Toschi, famous at the time, tutored Steve McQueen for “Bullitt” and was the role model for
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shootouts, grandstanding and false climaxes, and just follows the methodical progress of police work. Just as Woodward and Bernstein knocked on many doors and made many phone calls and met many very odd people, so do the cops and Graysmith walks down strange pathways in their investigation cause Graysmith is unarmed and civilian, we become genuinely worried about his naivete and risk-taking, especially during a trip to basement that is, in its way, one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen along those lines. Fincher gives us times, days and dates at the bottom of the screen, which serve only to underline how the case seems to stretch out to infinity. There is even time-lapse photo showing the Transamerica building going up. Everything leads up to a heart-stopping moment when two men look, simply look, at one another. It is a more satisfying conclu
sion than Dirty Harry shooting Zodiac dead, say, in a football stadium. Fincher is not the first director you would associate with this material. In 1992, at 30, he directed “Alien 3,” which was the least of the Alien movies, but even then had his eye (“Alien 3” is one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen). His credits include “Se7en” (1995), a superb film about another serial killer with a pattern to his crimes; and “The Game” (1997), with Michael Douglas caught in an ego-smashing web; “Fight Club” (1999), beloved by most, not by me; the ingenious terror Jodie Foster in “Panic Room” (2002), and now, five years between the features, his most thoughtful, involving film. He seems to be in reaction against the slice-and-dice style of modern crime movies; his composition and editing are more classical, and he doesn’t use nine shots when one will do. (If this same material had been put through an Avid to chop the
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footage into five times as many shots, we would have been sending our own ciphers to the studio.) Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else, and here he finds the right pace and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. I am often fasci-nated by true crime books, partly cause of the way they amass ominous details (the best I’ve read is Blood and Money by Tommy Thompson), and Fincher understands that true crime is not the same genre as crime action. That he makes every character one distinct individual is proof of that; consider the attention given to Graysmith’s choice of mixed drink.
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I am often fascinated by true crime books, partly because of the way they amass ominous details (the best I’ve read is Blood and Money, by Tommy Thompson), and Fincher understands that true crime is not the same genre as crime action.
Director
David Fincher
Writer
Gillian Flynn (screenplay), Gillian Flynn (novel)
Starring
Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris
Release Date Runtime Box Office
October 3, 2014 149 min Cumulative Worldwide Gross: $369,330,363
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Trivia Ben Affleck postponed directing Live By Night (2016) in order to work on this film with David Fincher, even stating, “He’s the only director I’ve met who can do everybody else’s job better than they could.” On-set one day, Affleck changed the lens setting on a camera an almost indiscernible amount, betting a crew member that Fincher wouldn’t notice. Affleck lost the bet as Fincher brought up, “Why does the camera look a little dim?”
Reese Witherspoon obtained the film rights from Gillian Flynn in June 2012, and decided to produce under her new production label “Pacific Standard” as she would to be able to play the role of Amy. However, after her initial meeting with David Fincher on his vision of the film, Witherspoon withdrew from contention, realizing that she wasn’t the right person to play the female lead. For her performance, Rosamund Pike drew inspiration from Nicole Kidman’s performance in To Die For (1995), and Sharon Stone’s in Basic Instinct (1992). She also studied Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F. Kennedy, Jr., for her body language and aloof mood.
Ben Affleck’s weight fluctuates in the film with him being of fairly average build, to being muscular, as a result of being cast as Batman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). David Fincher explained that one of the reasons he cast thirty-fiveyear-old Rosamund Pike as Amy, was that she was of unclear age in her appearance, and could pass for an older or younger woman. Rosamund’s revelation that she was an only child also proved to be a very appealing aspect for Amy’s character in Fincher’s opinion.
Originally, Nick was supposed to wear a Yankees cap in one scene. But Ben Affleck, a die-hard Red Sox fan, refused to wear it. Ultimately, he and David Fincher compromised, and he wears a Mets cap. The whole play with the pens of different colors was Gillian Flynn’s visual solution to the translation to the screen of Amy’s diary.
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Plot
THE DARK MAZE
On their fifth wedding anniversary, the teacher Nick Dunne returns home to find his wife Amy is missing. Her disappearance receives heavy press coverage, as Amy was the inspiration for her parents' popular Amazing Amy children's books. Detective Rhonda Boney does a walk-through of their house and then finds poorly concealed evidence of a struggle. The police conduct a forensic analysis and uncover the remnants of cleaned blood stains, leading to conclusion that Amy was murdered. Suspicions arise that Nick is responsible, and his apathetic behavior is interpreted bythe media as characteristic of a sociopath. Flashbacks reveal that Nick and Amy met at a party, and began the relationship after having sex later that night. At their engagement party, Amy reveals to Nick the secrets of her parents' books, remark how Amazing Amy's perfect behavior seemingly made up for the real Amy's mistakes. Over time, Nick and Amy's marriage disintegrated; both lost their jobs in the recession and moved from New York City to Nick's hometown of North Carthage, Missouri. Nick became lazy and distant, and began cheating on Amy with Andie Fitzgerald, one of his students. Boney unearths evidence of financial troubles and domestic disputes, and witness states that Amy wants to purchase a gun. She also finds a medical report indicating that Amy is pregnant, of which Nick denies knowledge, and a diary supposedly written by Amy highlight her growing isolation ominously ending with the fear that Nick will kill her.
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When Boney questions Amy about holes in her story, Amy chastises her as incompetent and ignorant. Then FBI sides with Amy, forcing Boney to back down. Amy tells Nick the truth, saying that man she watched pleading for her return on TV is the man she wants him to become again. Nick shares this with Boney, Bolt, and Margo, but they have no way to prove Amy's guilt.
Nick flies to New York City and meets Tanner Bolt, a lawyer known for his defenses of men accused of uxoricide. While investigating, Nick meets with Amy’s ex-boyfriend Tommy O’Hara, who says that Amy falsely accused him of rape long ago, hurting herself and planting evidence around his house to ensure conviction; Tommy was not jailed but was forced to register as a sex offender, ruining his career. The two gradually deduce Amy’s plan. Nick also approaches
Nick intends to leave Amy and expose her lies, but Amy reveals she is pregnant, having artificially inseminated herself with Nick's sperm stored at a fertility clinic. Nick doubts the child is his and says he’ll take a paternity test. He then reacts violently to Amy's insistence that they remain married, but feels responsible for the child. Despite Margo's objections, Nick reluctantly decides to stay with Amy. The "happy" couple announces on television they are expecting child.
another ex-boyfriend, the wealthy Desi Collings, against whom Amy previously filed a restraining order, but Desi refuses to share any details. When Amy’s neighbors at the campground rob her of her remaining money, she calls Desi and convinces him that she ran away from Nick because he was abusing her. He agrees to hide her in his lake house, which is equipped with surveillance cameras.
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THE FILMS
Nick convinces his twin sister, Margo, of his innocence. After Andie reveals their affair at a press conference, Nick appears on talk show to profess his innocence and apologize for his failures as a husband in the hope of luring Amy. His performance rekindles Amy's feelings for him, even as Boney arrests him for Amy's murder. Amy inflicts injuries on herself and uses Desi's surveillance cameras to her advantage, making it appear that Desi kidnapped and raped her. She seduces Desi when he comes home and slits his throat with a box cutter blade hidden under a pillow; he bleeds to death. Covered in Desi's blood, she returns home and names him as her captor and rapist, clearing Nick of suspicion.
Amy is revealed to be alive and well, having changed her appearance and gone into hiding in a distant campground in the Ozarks. Upon learning that Nick was cheating on her, she resolved to punish him by framing him for her murder. Amy plans the framing in great detail: she befriends a pregnant neighbor to steal her urine for the pregnancy test (and hides the friendship from Nick), drains her own blood to leave traces of evidence of murder and fabricates a diary describing her fear of Nick. She also has Nick unknowingly increase her life insurance so it looks like he murdered her for the money. By using the clues in a "treasure hunt" game she and Nick play on their anniversary, she ensures he visits places where she has planted the corroborating evidence of Nick's guilt for the police to discover. She anticipates Nick will be convicted and executed for her murder, and contemplates committing suicide after his conviction.
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Review
Roger Ebert
"Gone Girl" is art and entertainment, thriller Flynn from her bestselling potboiler, "Gone and an issue and an eerily assured audience Girl" suggests one of those are overheated, picture. It is also a film that shifts emphasis fairly comic-bookish "R"-rated thrillers that and perspective so many times that you may were everywhere in the late '80s and early feel as though you are watching five short '90s. Like those sorts of pictures, "Gone Girl" movies strung together, each morphing into is dependent upon reversals of expectation the next. At first, "Gone Girl" seem to tell the and point of view. As soon as you get handle story of a man who might or might not have on what it is, it becomes something else, and killed somebody, and it’s so closed off and something else again. Describing storyline alienating (like Bruno Richard Hauptmann, in detail would ruin aspects that would be perhaps) that even people who believe his counted as selling points for anyone who has innocence can't help wondering. His name not read Flynn's book. That's why I'm being is Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck). He is a college so vague. Suffice to say that its explicit sex professor and a blocked writer. His dissatiand violence and one-damn-thing-after-ansfied wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) disappears other, to-hell-with-realism plotting put it in one day, prompting local cops to open missthe “Basic Instinct”/”Fatal Attraction”/”Preing persons case that becomes the murder sumed Innocent” wheelhouse. That is the investigation after three days pass without metafictionally-minded version of a bloody word from her. Amy and Nick seemed like a domestic melodrama that actually uses the happy couple the snippets from Amy's diary, word “meta” (in a scene where Nick and the read in voice-over by Amy and accompanied cops discuss his bar, which is named The by flashbacks, hint at differences between Bar). It ties much of its mystery plot to an them, but not the sort it seem irreconcilable anniversary scavenger hunt with these clues (not at first, anyway). Were things ever really enclosed in numbered envelopes marked all that sunny, though? If they weren't, which “clue.” Key scenes revolve around the public spouse was the main source of rancor? Can statements that are in some sense perforwe trust what Nick tells homicide detectives mances, and that are evaluated by onlookers (Kim Dickens, Patrick Fugit both outstanding) in terms of the believability, and yet it never who investigate Amy's case? Can we trust crosses the line and becomes too much the what Amy tells us via her diary, is one of the spouses lying? Are they both lying? If so, to what end? The film raises these questions and others, and it answers nearly all of them, often in boldface, all-caps sentences that end with exclamation points. It’s not a film nor is it trying to be. As directed by David Fincher “Se7en,” “Zodiac” and as adapted by Gillian
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deconstruction or parody. It’s plot-obsessed picture that’s determined to stay one step ahead of the audience at all times and cheat when it feels it has to. It is a perfect example of one sub-genre that the great critic Anne Billson has labeled "the preposterous thriller," in which "characters and their behavior bear no relation not just to life as we know it, but to any sort of properly structured fiction we may have hitherto encountered," and many classic and near-classic films can be slotted into this sub-genre. One of them is Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," a film in which the bad guy’s scheme makes no sense if you think about it for longer than thirty seconds and that, in any event, would have unraveled had even the smallest part of that not gone precisely as envisioned. (How did Gavin and imposter-Maddie get out of the bell tower,
and a relationship gone, and coupled with elaborate revenge fantasy that both exploits and reclaims sexist images and assumptions. It’s also film about a psychopath who turns an ordinary life into chaos. Like lots of Hitchcock—and like certain domestic nightmares by such filmmakers as Brian De Palma and Luis Bunuel—each scene in the movie refers, however obliquely to real fears real emotions and real configurations of love or friendship. But at the same time, not a single frame is meant to be taken literally, as a documentarylike account of how people are, or should be, or shouldn’t be. It’s working through primordial feelings in the manner of a blues song, a pulp thriller, a film noir, or a horror picture.
without being seen by anybody, including Scottie? Was there a second stairwell?) After “Gone Girl” I overheard a couple listing all the dropped plot threads and narrative holes big enough to hide aircraft carriers in. This isn’t the sort of movie that can withstand that kind of scrutiny. You might as well say, “That part in my dream where the penguin told me where to dig for the treasure seemed unreThese modes all trade in stereotypical views alistic.” What of “Gone Girl” as a parable of of the essences of masculinity and femininity. gender relations, one that eventually takes All are politically incorrect by definition. All an ugly misogynist turn? I have heard these seem to have had at least some bearing on charges leveled, and they have merit. You’ll “Gone Girl.” The movie is sick joke, a fable understand what I mean once you have seen and a lament. It’s “He done her wrong” and the movie. At the same time, though, as we “She done him wrong.” It’s “Men are spineless evaluate those complaints, we owe it to Flynn, pigs” and “Hell hath no fury like a woman Fincher and everyone involved to take into scorned.” If you make blanket assumptions account what sort of film this is, what mode about what men and women are capable of, it’s operating, and how transparent it’s about and the circumstances under with they are what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and why. capable of it, this film will confirm them. “Gone Girl” is a nightmare of love gone cold “Your chin,” Amy tells Nick in a flashback,
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“it’s quite villainous.” He covers it up with his finger, but now that she’s pointed it out, you can’t not stare at it. The most intriguing thing about “Gone Girl” is how droll it is. For long stretches, Fincher’s gliding the widescreen camerawork. Immaculate compositions and sickly, desaturated colors fuse with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s creepy-optimistic synthesized score to create a perverse bigscreen version of one of those TV comedies built around the pathetically unobservant lump of a husband and his hypercontrolling, slightly shrewish wife. For most of its running time, “Gone Girl” is “Everybody Loves Accused Wife-Murderer Raymond,” sprinkled with colorful-verging-on-wacky supporting players (including Tyler Perry as a Johnnie Cochran-like defense attorney and Neil Patrick Harris as a former flame of Amy’s who’s still obsessed with her). Then it takes a right turn, and a left turn, and flips upside down. I’m not saying the film is a genuinely clever throughout (though it is always a fiendishly manipulative) or that every twist is defensible (a few are stupid). I’m saying that “Gone Girl”is what it is, that it knows what it is, and that it works. You know how well it’s working when you hear how audiences laugh at it, and with it. Their laughter evolves as the film does. They laugh tentatively at first, then with an enthusiasm that gives way to a full-throated, “I endorse this madness!” gusto during the final half-hour, when the story spirals into DePalma-style expressionism and the picture becomes maelstrom of blood, tears and other bodily fluids.
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That it’s hard to tell whether Fincher has an opinion on anything he’s showing us or just sadistically bemused, like an evil child tormenting insects, somehow adds to the movie’s dark vibrancy.
Thanks
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“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.” —William Shakespeare, Macbeth
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