Am I the last person in the world to see Gone Girl? Probably not, but close. While looking at Ben Affleck is fun, his acting can be painful to watch; however this movie may be perfect for him. He plays Nick, a mediocre man who transforms into a terrible husband to a woman who runs laps around him financially, educationally and mentally. When his amazing wife goes missing, he becomes the prime suspect. What happened?
David Fincher directs Gone Girl, which is an adaptation of a Gillian Flynn novel, which I will probably never read because I am not into mysteries. The film is a character study, an analysis of gender norms with a regressive, problematic underbelly that could easily be missed because the movie is so darn entertaining. The narrative is a delightful braid of converging storylines with the husband’s collapsing present and the wife’s perfect past as recounted in the depiction of her journal entries. Once the storylines merge to the present, they jut out once more to reveal the mystery behind the wife’s disappearance, and the tension builds unbearably because of the mortal dangers faced. Instead of the movie winding down with the revelation, which was spoiled for me, it ramped up, and it becomes the kind of movie that you never want to end because it is so bananas. It is only as the movie enters its third dizzying cycle of manipulation and mind games that the movie felt rushed. As the writer ups the ante, it felt less like a denouement and more like shameless begging for a spinoff series or a sequel though neither is likely.
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I can understand why Ben Affleck worked on Gone Girl. It is a terrific way to skewer the absurdity and fickleness of the public’s interaction with their perceived persona of you. It is a cinematic way to give the finger to the public without explicitly alienating them. It must have been as cathartic as Midsommar. It plays to his strengths as a guy dumbly blessed with looks and charms, but clueless as to his surroundings and how to live fully. By the time that he understands, he is only savvy in front of the cameras, but alone, he clutches the cat scared and rocking himself in a room knowing that he cannot be rescued from what superficially seems like a perfect life. Maybe he is a brilliant actor because it felt as if all those paparazzi shots of Affleck wearily smoking a cigarette were brought to life. Or maybe he is just playing himself.
I can understand why Rosamund Pike accepted the role of the wife in Gone Girl, Amy. She gets to play every role in a single movie and is basically an evil mastermind with a demented distorted view of the world. My favorite scenes are the ones in which she cannot anticipate danger and gets in over her head particularly at the campgrounds. She is genuinely shaken, and I would have liked to seen more moments where she has to confront the flaws in her abilities and limitations of her world view. I enjoyed her working class foils, the detective and the neighbor, and would have preferred that those moments expanded rather than as standalone vignettes. By the end of the movie, Amy is unstoppable except in front of the cameras to keep up appearances, but even within the logic of this universe, it is not true because we know that the wrong person in her path can make her powerless. So why do we need a domineering, invincible evil woman?
Flynn has defined feminism as, “It’s also the ability to have women who are bad characters…the one thing that really frustrates me is the idea that women are innately nurturing.” I absolutely agree, and whenever someone that suggests that a woman should be in charge of the country, I reply, “Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann.” My references are dated, but it would be an oversimplification that she does only creates a deliciously bad woman. She goes the extra step of creating an entire dynamic that plays into regressive ideologies that support prevailing beliefs that actually do not reflect statistics: women lie about rape and abuse; men actually have no power and are the victims of crazy women; and women are smug, wrong and never admit it. Women have all the power in Gone Girl: law enforcement, media, money and marriage. Even Nick is powerless in the face of a student that he has an affair with. All women are the enemy, even his sister. He has no responsibility. He is just a dumb man. It takes the CBS dynamic of the schlubby guy with the hot significant other and makes it into a thriller where he is absolved of any responsibility even when he is objectively wrong. Flynn creates a scenario where it is acceptable to call someone a bitch or a cunt and smack a woman around.
The eleventh-hour baby suggests that Flynn is meditating on the nature of relationships, specifically gender dynamics, in heteronormative relationships in Gone Girl. She paints men as victims and women as villains with the baby as the battleground in a mismatched battle that will warp the child’s soul. Nick enters the relationship clueless as to the monster that he married, and Amy delusionally believes that she elevated Nick to more than he was. They seem to be Flynn’s idea of the every husband and every wife with the reverse as a ghost of the past, Nick’s parents, the evil husband and the long-suffering, perfect wife. I love a bleak ending and am quite cynical about relationships, but even I am a little stunned at Flynn’s jaundiced eye.
There is only one aspect of Gone Girl that punctures this dynamic. Amy’s parents seem decent except it feels abusive to create a fictional daughter better than your real one, though in hindsight, understandable. They give amazing hugs to Nick and are surprisingly supportive in the beginning. On the other hand, if my parents asked me for money from a trust that they made for me, I would probably reply, “Um, then what is the point of a trust?”
Gone Girl did not always work. When Amy visits her first boyfriend’s luxurious home, he lists the amenities: music, Netflix, satellite, Roku, internet. Um, show, don’t tell because you kind of described my home. Alright, not the satellite. OK, I don’t have heated floors so maybe start there next time. Margo, Nick’s sister, did not ring true. She existed only to support her brother. She had zero life outside of him: no friends, significant others, not even an animal. I understand that twins are close, but it does not mean that they don’t have lies. A friend thought that maybe it was because she had to take care of their parents. As a caretaker, it is possible, but absolutely not true for me. I needed a life outside of my family.
I am a lawyer so these moments bothered me. Who flies to meet a lawyer in the lobby of his office building? Nick never ends up in the office. Then Nick, not the lawyer, conducts the investigation. Also there is a moment where the lawyer gets flustered and wants to end the interview, but it is the Barbra Streisand moment for Nick to become Affleck. Sorry, that lawyer would have said the line, “This changes nothing!”
No cat would tolerate so many strangers. Hopefully the baby is like the cat because that cat made it work with two very different human beings. It was down for reassuring cuddles with Affleck and standing by as Amy made crepes without an ounce of fear that Amy loved Fatal Attraction. In a movie like Gone Girl, be the cat!