The sometimes wonderful Richard Brody has joined the ranks of those who understand that Gone Girl is about much, much more than a friggin’ airport-thriller plot. And is much more than just a film about the Five D’s — despisings, deceit, disgust, deception and disappearance. I tried explaining to a friend earlier today that Fincher’s film is not really about the tale. It’s about the broader (and yet highly particular) strokes. The tale is just the clothes line. It’s the socio-cultural stuff…the rotting-yuppie-hell-vile-media wash that Fincher hangs on it — that’s what the movie really is. Brody also floats a Stanley Kubrick analogy. Yes, I realize that Fincher-Kubrick comparisons have already been kicked around on this site but you need to be patient as these arguments tend to pop up when they pop up.

Excerpt: “Gone Girl is David Fincher’s Eyes Wide Shut. As Kubrick did in his final film, Fincher lifts the lid off the black box of marriage. He reveals the core of unredressed resentment, unfulfilled desire, inescapable duplicity, unrelieved anger, unresolved doubts, unrevealed secrets, and relentless self-abnegation on which the life of a couple depends. But Gone Girl goes a step beyond Kubrick’s film, by rooting the action in the particulars of the digital age. The new public realm — the intentional representation of private life in public view and the way that those representations quickly get out of hand — is at the center of Fincher’s movie. And it’s from here that the movie’s modernity, immediacy, and urgency arise.”