Fincher's Digital Hour

Just before the Dragon pounces on us with its press junkets, red carpet and worldwide promo, let's ponder on Fincher's films.

Books on Fincher are so rare they deserve to be noticed. 4 years earlier 'Dark Eye' was the first reference book published on the director and by the way mentioned on this blog. Now here comes a French essay called 'Fincher's Digital Hour'.



I can hear you already : 'an essay on Fincher by a French guy, not even translated in English?! This must be for film scholars or intellectuals'. Not exactly. This less than a 100 pages book actually reads like a smart and philosophical page-turner. A n insightful study of what makes the films so unique and mostly what connects them. It is never boring and most of the assumptions actually make sense when you're familiar with Fincher's oeuvre.

French producer, and it seems at his spare time philosopher, Guillaume Orignac reflects on Fincher's characters that are more childlike than adults, leaving a life of solitude, intoxicated by their curiosity, forced to give up with their quiet and well regulated life. Orignac also explores Fincher's claustrophobic geography ('dead-ends, back-alleys, walled spaces, soon decayed houses...') which even Se7en's final sequence in open air doesn't betray with its high voltage lines criss-crossing an imprisoned sky. His point of view is often clever like when he describes The Game as a 'movie full of dead persons without corpses, of vanishings without traces and traces without vanishings.'

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there're two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.
David Fincher

Now that Fincher has joined Hollywood top director's list, one can expect more books to flow in very soon. Meanwhile, this one, though aiming for a limited readership, deserves much credit for questioning Fincher's brilliant body of work.

Thanks to Guillaume for sharing his work with us.

Book can be ordered here or here.