There's a coziness to how David Fincher's movies look that often stands in contrast to their gloomy take on humanity. You might want to read a book in the deposition room in The Social Network, or go away for a winter weekend to the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo cabin.
The warmth of Fincher's visuals — his go-to production designer, Donald Graham Burt, won an Oscar for art direction for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — might make you forget the bleakness of his narratives. Like the fact that people's lives are being torn apart in The Social Network, and that there is a serial killer on the compound in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Or that Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy (Rosamund Pike), whom we see in BuzzFeed's exclusive clip below, flirting and drinking Belgian beer at a party in an upscale loft, should run screaming from each other instead of — well, instead of what happens in Gone Girl, Fincher's twisty mystery thriller that opens Oct. 3.
The scene takes place early in the movie, as rendered in a flashback from Amy's diary. It's the start of their loving relationship begun in New York City, when both characters have promising careers and lives and things to offer each other. But in the film's present, in North Carthage, Missouri, things have turned toxic between them.
Gillian Flynn adapted the screenplay from her own best-selling novel of the same name. And if Gone Girl does one thing, it is to ask of Nick and Amy, again and again, who are you?
