The Girl on the Train

Just as when reading the novel on which The Girl on the Train is based, it is impossible to avoid comparisons with Gone Girl. Both films have noirish, bleak visual stylisation (in Fincher's case, that’s the director’s signature; in Taylor’s, it’s rather an imitation), both depict marriage as a life-threatening game filled with manipulation, lies and hypocrisies (with a cynical sense of detachment and ironic distance from the characters in Gone Girl, but in all seriousness in The Girl on the Train), and both films alternate between multiple narrators (with greater sophistication in Gone Girl). Compared to the slightly misogynistic Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train is more explicitly targeted at adult female viewers, who are encouraged through Rachel’s story to rely on themselves rather than on what they are told or what others want for them. Especially men. ___ As in the book, the final reversal of the roles of victim and offender is a tribute to the emphatic pro-woman cri de coeur, which greatly degrades the impact and sheds doubt on the meaning of the film’s portrayal of an alcoholic woman. Built more on strong acting performances than on narrative games, the film is largely conceived not as a crime thriller, but as a psychological study of an internally insecure woman in search of her lost (self-)confidence. The ending, which unlike the book contains a needless epilogue, suddenly negates this feeling of shame and guilt, intensified by the excellent Emily Blunt throughout the film. As in many of Hitchcock’s thrillers involving the transfer of guilt, the perpetrator was someone other than the film had previously indicated, which in this case, however, serves to resolve only the crime aspect of the narrative, but not the psychological dimension, which comes off as unsatisfying. ___ Thanks to the graphic continuity of the shots and precisely timed editing, Taylor succeeds in fostering the impression of fluidity and interconnectedness of the individual segments of the narrative, or rather of the individual narrators. Flashbacks showing various distant episodes from Megan’s life intensify the suspense with respect to what actually happened. Like Rachel, with her memory affected by sipping vodka, we know only fragments of reality and we have to continually add to and adjust the overall picture on the basis of new information. Like the protagonist, we also mistakenly infer who we are seeing in some of the images based on the available context. The unreliable narrative thus does not serve as the screenwriter’s calculated attempt to deceive the viewer, but is organically connected with the protagonist’s mental state and cognitive abilities. As a result, The Girl on the Train is a compact and focused film, most of whose shortcomings (the mishandled ending, lack of detachment, occasionally melodramatically forced sense of tragedy) stem from the book’s premise or are associated with the audience’s expectations (it’s not a thriller, but a drama). If you see romantic relationships as a cynical comedy that sometimes bring a smile to your face, Gone Girl will probably remain your favourite relationship movie. If you prefer a more tragic approach, The Girl on the Train may suit you better. 80% (06/10/2016) (less) (more)