David Fincher’s Gone Girl focuses on marital gaslighting, crazy media, and even so maddened husbands, but that’s not all. Amy (Rosamund Pike) cut Desi’s throat during their sexual encounter, causing him to have a climax right before he passed away. Then, covered in his blood, she went back to her husband and claimed to have been abducted during her whole absence. Here’s the real twist: this is not what happened in the book.
Readers did not witness Desi’s demise in the book. However, people are unable to forget the movie after seeing it, which is why it was included in Entertainment Weekly’s Best of 2014 coverage. The same outlet spoke with Jeff Cronenweth, the cinematographer for Gone Girl, on the process of filming Harris’s pivotal scene.
The Gone Girl crew had to construct a headboard that would be crucial to the scenario before Desi could die. “We lit it very cosmetically and almost seductively, in total contrast to what was actually going to happen,” stated Cronenweth. On the headboard, they had “this really nice, soft, very complimentary light, and then we let the rest of the room fall off—which helps mentally lull an audience into a false sense of security.”
The scene, which was filmed over two days, required a lot of Harris and Rosamund Pike. In addition to being physically taxed, they spent a significant portion of it naked.
“It’s an exhausting scene for the actors, and they’re very, very exposed. It’s always tough when you’re in those circumstances, especially when one of those circumstances turns into a murder,” Cronenweth remarked. “It was working out the physicality of that and maintaining respect [while] knowing the amount of shock that we wanted to accomplish, and keeping it as real as possible.”
The team employed very little computer-generated imagery in an effort to make the setting as realistic as possible. Harris had two pneumatic hoses flowing down his back and off his leg on the day of filming, which led to crew members staying off-camera. They would carefully pressurize the artificial blood canisters when the moment approached. The team’s only post-production tasks were to ensure that the blood was the correct color, to oversee a detailed dissection of the wound, and to integrate the prosthesis into the shot.
“In something like that, she’s beneath him, and you want to see her perspective,” Cronenweth said. “I think it’s far more terrifying when you’re part of it, as opposed to just being an observer. When the first slit comes—because at that point no one has any idea what she’s doing with this blade—it’s a great angle. And of course, his performance was fantastic, and the sheer volume of blood was horrifying. [We wanted] to make it as first-person as you possibly can with a camera, so you feel more involved and really appreciate the violence.” The camera angles used in the scene were equally crucial. The camera is pointing up at Dezi as Amy strikes him, as most viewers presumably remember, giving the impression that the audience will be slashed by blood. (metaphorically)
The film crew was adamant about making the audience realise that Amy was a notorious sociopath. At that point in the movie, [we wanted] to lull the audience into this area and then shock them,” Cronenweth said. “But more importantly, we wanted to truly show Amazing Amy’s colors and see the sociopath that she really is. As bright as she thinks she is, she’s just as easily manipulated as she manipulates everybody else. So that was the task at hand. Obviously, it’s a pivotal scene in the movie, and certainly one that people don’t forget.”
As concluding remarks, Cronenweth clarified Amy’s decision to murder Desi while having sex. She was attempting to give the impression that he had sexually assaulted her, but the amount of blood used in the scene also had something to do with her plan. “In a prison gang, if they’re going to take someone out, they love to get them outside in a pick-up game of basketball or something so that your heart’s beating very fast—as his would be when he’s making love to her. So that when you do do a slit like that, you bleed out in a few seconds, as opposed to two minutes. They do it in the prison yards because, by the time anybody gets there to help, it’s too late. So that is part of her sociopath knowledge.”
