- Seven
This week, the first major movie of the fall, David Fincher’s Gone Girl, hit multiplexes to more or less widespread acclaim. (For what it’s worth, my boss J.R. Jones, America’s most reliable film critic, wasn’t a fan.) The release of a new Fincher film feels like a major event at this point, so endeared is he to moviegoers of mainstream and more refined tastes alike. Personally, I have a complicated relationship with his films, which are hardened, meticulously structured gadgets with rigid-to-the-point-of-oppressive narratives and terse visual sensibilities. I tend to prefer rustic, looser, more spontaneous and handmade films—the antithesis of Fincher’s, essentially—but the technique on display is too impressive not to appreciate. Plus, I’ve gradually warmed myself to Fincher’s occasionally callous touch. Known for his Kubrickian tendency to shoot the same scene dozens and dozens of times over, the director has earned the nickname “40 Takes” Fincher, and it’s easy to detect such tedium in his work—but his films are ultimately so efficient and breezy they essentially efface his mechanical methods. Somehow, he makes the most painstaking, heavily orchestrated sequences—like The Social Network‘s arduous, dialogue-spinning opening scene—seem effortless and natural, and there’s a certain kind of beauty in that. You can find my five favorite Fincher films below.
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo There’s something alluring about watching skilled professionals practice their craft onscreen, and here, Fincher, to quote Ben Sachs in his capsule review, “[makes] information technology eerily seductive.” The film is among Fincher’s most metaphysical, illustrating the white-collar and therefor invisible labor of his characters with an elegant and highly organized visual design that, similar to The Social Network, emblazons the vulgar, dime-store material.
