Birthday Bash: David Fincher’s Top 7

Today David Fincher turns 62. Once a week, here at the Contending we will celebrate the birthdays of filmmakers, and actors (film and TV) by creating a top 7 list of their best work. Why 7? Because it’s a pretty number, and everyone does 10. We are doing 7. 

There are some minor (but not hard and fast rules):

• Filmmakers can be directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, composers, etc.
• Actors who are typically leads will have those performances weighted more heavily, but, for example, were I writing about Brad Pitt today, his cameo in True Romance would get serious consideration.
• Actors who are typically in supporting (or character) roles may find their selections more fast and loose
• As we are so used to in the modern day, those in front of, and behind, the camera move from film to TV with regularity. These lists reserve the right to mix and match.
• All rules above, such as they are, are subject to exception and how passionately a writer of one of these posts feels about a particular work by the talent being feted.

Before we begin, as a reminder, the only list that really matters is your own

Preamble over. Shall we begin?

The top 7 works of David Fincher on his 62nd birthday:

7. The Killer (2023): Fincher’s most recent film not only was an excellent, austere look at a killer for hire who has his life upended by a botched job, but it also reminded us of how good Michael Fassbender could be after poor Fassy spent some years in the wilderness after The Snowman flopped in 2017. Few directors on earth shoot with the style and immediacy of David Fincher–only Michael Mann springs to mind. And while that’s certainly the case with The Killer, Fincher elevates the patience in his filmmaking to its highest level. The film begins with a long extended shot of Fassbender’s hitman just waiting in a nearby high rise for his target to appear. The scenes of violence in the film tend to be very short (save one extraordinary fight scene between Fassbender and a ‘roided up “Florida man”). Those who might have been expecting a film with the flash of Se7en or Fight Club may have wanted for more, but as the film peaks with a standoff between Fassbender and the great Tilda Swinton, all that deliberate storytelling pays off in spades. It’s not common anymore for actors to get an Oscar nomination in support of a part with so little screen time (see Judi Dench in Shakespeare in Love or Jane Alexander in All the President’s Men…), but were that practice still en vogue, Swinton’s charming, polite, and merciless portrayal would have been deserving.

6. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011): Perhaps the only time Fincher ever made a film that I wondered whether it was necessary at all…and then I saw it. Only two years separated the Swedish-Danish production of the original movie that made Noomi Rapace a star as Lisbeth Salander–the dramatically tattooed, tough-as-nails lesbian, ace hacker caught up in the dark secrets of a very wealthy family. The Rapace film was a worldwide sensation, and while a US remake seemed a certainty at some point, why would Fincher take interest in telling someone else’s story while that story was still hot? Regardless, what Fincher accomplished with Rooney Mara (the second OOSalander) was as immediate and thrilling as its source. Much of the credit has to go to Mara’s fearless performance that got as close to Rapace as one could ever dream, but perhaps most notable is that for all the fine work Danish director Niels Arden Oplev delivered with Rapace, Fincher is just a sizable step above in talent. The film’s flow is as crisp as the Nordic air, and the casting of Daniel Craig as the journalist working with Salander was spot on as well. It’s one hell of a neat trick Fincher pulled off by avoiding rote homage without changing much besides adding his cinematic methodology. Remarkably, that was enough.

5. Gone Girl (2014): Gillian Flynn’s stunningly successful novel “Gone Girl” from 2012 might have seemed like another surprising choice for Fincher to helm. The pulpy beach read phenomenon that Flynn created (and has since grown in esteem–a status that the film contributed to) might have seemed light for Fincher. But what Fincher did, while largely staying true to the novel, is create an almost kaleidoscopic look at true crime infamy in modern life (one would swear that Ben Affleck’s performance as the husband of a missing woman was based on the infamous wife-murderer Scott Peterson). He also gave the terrific actor Rosamund Pike the role of her life, as a Hitchcockian femme fatale the likes we hadn’t seen since Sharon Stone wielded an ice pick in Basic Instinct. But even deeper than Fincher’s look at what draws us to the eyes of the miseries of others, is the internal misery he showed between Affleck and Pike as they navigated a marriage that had gone so far south that Affleck’s character’s desire for her to be found had more to do with wanting to get past the unwanted media attention, not to reunite. Above all else, Gone Girl is a brilliant exposé on the idea that staying together may be the worst thing a couple could do.

4. Fight Club (1999): To my mind, Fincher’s most misunderstood movie. You will find many a dudebro who will find this withering take on toxic masculinity to be a “badass” movie about men being men, slugging it out sans shirts and shoes with their bare knuckles in an underground fighting ring. Fincher was not shooting for something so simple. Between the moments of violence punctuated with dark humor (I will die on the hill that Fight Club is a full-on comedy), are themes about commercialism, and the desire to feel in a culture that values your car, condo, and glassware more than your humanism. And how does our lead Edward Norton Jr. find meaning away from his well-paying but soul-crushing day job? By getting hit and the face. As Tyler Durden, Norton’s alter ego, Brad Pitt gives one of his most engaging performances as the human-fat-stealing, soap-making inspiration for the fight clubs. Now, with all the testosterone-driven violence floating around the film (with only the great Helena Bonham-Carter as Norton/Durden’s demented girlfriend taking off some of that manly edge), I can see how some might take Fight Club as a “real man” movie. But that misses the entire point of the film, as the film culminates with Norton’s character quite literally taking a gun and trying to shoot the toxicity out of his face. And then he and Bonham-Carter hold hands and look out of their high-rise window to watch buildings fall to the skewed perspective of the great Pixies’ track, “Where is My Mind.”

3. Se7en (1995): After spending many years as a music video director, and by most accounts botching his feature film debut with critically savaged and box office disappointment Alien 3, Fincher made his first foray into the serial killer genre with the instant classic, Se7en. Teaming up Morgan Freeman (in a role Denzel Washington turned down to his deep regret) and Brad Pitt as detectives searching for a diabolical serial killer played by (in an uncredited) Kevin Spacey, Se7en turned the whole genre on its head. Not since Hitchcock’s Psycho had a film about a serial killer asked us to take the story so seriously. Spacey’s killer based his murders on the “seven deadly sins” as classified by Christianity and Islam. Seldom have I seen a film create such palpable dread, starting with the opening credits and closing with the sin of wrath. I’ll never forget sitting in a crowded theater when the box showed up in a remote area outside of Los Angeles and getting the sense that I knew what was inside. I’m not a person who talks to the screen when I’m in my seat at the movie house. I consider that rude. And yet, the word “no” weakly escaped my lips. The film ends with the killer completing his goal, even though he has been apprehended and dispatched. Evil triumphed over good. The film closes with Morgan Freeman’s extraordinary voice saying, “Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “The world is a fine place and worth fighting for,” and then with the slightest of pauses, completed the film’s final line with “I agree with the second part.” Rarely has a film shaken me so.

2. Zodiac: Fincher returned to the serial killer genre (yes, I will get to Mindhunter to complete the tryptic) in 2007. However, those expecting a film akin to Se7en would be sorely disappointed. Fincher is not one to repeat himself regardless of subject similarity. Zodiac still had Fincher’s expertise in creating dread, and his seamless filmcraft. Yet you’d swear he’d been watching a lot of classic Sidney Lumet films (particularly Serpico and The Verdict) before he began shooting the true-life story of the never-captured serial killer named “The Zodiac” who terrorized the Bay area of California in the late ‘60s. Fincher’s commitment to the procedural process of trying to uncover the killer through a journalist (Robert Downey Jr.), two cops (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards), and of all things a cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal) at the San Francisco Chronicle–who had a penchant for decoding the riddle-filled messages of “The Zodiac” was complete. All of the leads and supporting characters are routinely excellent, but John Carroll Lynch as the top suspect steals the film with just the barest of screen time. The hulking Lynch is deranged, formidable, and terrifying. The film leaves you with the idea that Lynch’s “Arthur Leigh Allen” may have been their man. But Zodiac doesn’t operate in fan fiction. It sticks to the facts (as much as any movie can), and in doing so, tells a tale of failure. An incredibly bold choice, that I’m certain hurt the film’s box office take and led to not a single Oscar nomination despite being a superior film in all forms of measurement.

1. The Social Network (2010): No film in Fincher’s CV is as applicable to modern times as his telling of the creation of Facebook (“Drop the “the,” it’s cleaner”–Justin Timberlake as Napster creator and Facebook cling-on Sean Parker), and the legal battles that ensued. As Mark Zuckerberg, Jesse Eisenberg gives a career-best performance as a young man so driven to create the greatest social media platform ever known that he will lead along and shaft potential partners (the “Winklevi”–played by Armie Hammer in a brilliant dual role as identical twins), and his closest friend (Andrew Garfield, who supplies the heart of the film). The Social Network is a film like Oppenheimer or JFK in which most of the film is made up of white people talking theory and with little actual action. On paper, it would seem to be a boring subject, but not in the hands of Fincher. Propelled by the throbbing, insistent score of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network takes the driest of material (twentysomethings writing code) and creates a sensationally engaging experience that has only grown in significance as other platforms like Instagram (owned by Facebook), Twitter/X, Reddit, TikTok and god knows what else has completely changed our lives (along with smartphones), which have us constantly looking for online engagement instead of in-person engagement. Scores of years from now, many books will be written on what social media has done to us as human beings and our ability to relate to one another. I doubt the findings will be positive. As the film closes, the irony of Fincher’s film sets in. Here is a very young billionaire who has created a site that connects people, and no one could look less connected to others than Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg, who looks like the loneliest person on earth.

Postscript: It is necessary to explain my exclusion of Mindhunter, Fincher’s stellar series on Netflix that explored the early years of serial killer profiling. Mindhunter is one of the greatest shows I have seen on television with one significant caveat: it never reached a satisfactory conclusion. Fincher walked away from the show just as it was gaining momentum with many a storyline left incomplete, and hints at where the show was headed next (the BTK killer). Alas, for reasons that still feel mysterious, it was not to be. Had Fincher brought the series to a satisfying close (and hey, there’s still time!), Mindhunter would have easily been in the upper echelon of my 7.

Lastly, I leave you with these words from the man himself: