Gone Girl (2014)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Rosamund Pike, Ben Affleck, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry
Fact #1: It is eminently watchable. Something about its dialogue and pacing doesn't get old. I've seen it maybe four times. I like to put it on while cleaning the house.
Fact #2: David Fincher directed it and its extremely Fincheresque.
Fact #3: We discovered after his divorce that Ben Affleck basically plays himself.*
(*ok, fine, the last fact doesn't relate to Gone Girl 's popularity but I never miss an opportunity to rip on Ben Affleck.)
I think the principle goal in discussing Gone Girl should be to pick the story apart and determine what's really going on here. Because a lot is going on, and much of it is culturally relevant and topical, yes, but a lot of it is also misogynistic and superficially post-modern in the most nefarious way (yes, I know a woman wrote the book, so shut your mouth).
The structure of Gone Girl is awkward, but there are three parts.
The first part begins with Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) coming home on the day of his fifth wedding anniversary to find that his wife, Amy (Rosamund Pike) has disappeared in an apparent murder/kidnapping. Police uncover evidence of the perpetrator having tried to mask a struggle, and they also learn that Amy was pregnant. We learn from diary entries and flashbacks that Amy met her husband Nick at a party in New York City (there's one weirdly unsexy scene involving sugar-fog) and after that, they fall hard for one another, get married and live happily ever after, until... BAM!, insert the Recession. After losing their jobs and enduring the tragedy of Nick playing video games on the couch all day, the couple leaves New York and moves into a mansion in a small town in Missouri to care for Nick's ailing mother. He purchases a bar with his wife's trustfund money because that's obviously such a good idea.
At this point we have't officially "met" Amy, except through her voice-over from her diary entries, and so we are stuck with POV's from Nick, his sister, the police, and the sort of small-town America in which pictures of a missing blond woman are blasted on billboards. We gradually begin to suspect Nick of being responsible for Amy's death and we also learn he's been sleeping with one of his young students, which looks very bad for him indeed. The first part of the movie ends with the police's discovery of a sexy playful scavenger hunt anniversary game that reveals more proof that Nick killed her, and then, the film cuts to the BIG (and only) REVEAL. Ready for it? Gasp: Amy staged her own murder.
What follows is a frenetic, confessional voice-over explaining everything in what is arguably the best scene of the whole film. Amy's voice-over changes its tone from soft and inquisitive to assertive and conniving. She explains scenario by scenario, intricately and brilliantly, how she was able to dupe everyone and frame her husband for her own murder. I don't have time to get into the deets, but it involved drawing her own blood by the liters, stealing her pregnant fake-friend's urine, and taking god knows how many months to pen a fake diary. Turns out Amy knew about the affair and was obviously miserable after leaving New York. What's cool about this-- in a series of rapid, "cool" Fincherian shots of Amy on the run-- is her totally believable and convincing explanation for her motivations: "Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That's murder." The dialogue is well-written and impressive. There's also a great line about her being "the cool girl" and doing everything that Nick liked, maintaining a size 2 while cold eating pizza and drinking canned beer. We can relate.
The movie could have-should have ended here, because after this, it appears to have no clue what to do with itself. In other words, it becomes a boring post-modern novel. Part II:
Amy befriends some rednecks at a motel and they rob her. Desperate, she contacts her crazy, rich ex-boyfriend, Desi (Neil Patrick Harris) whom she manipulates and deceives into taking her in, despite the entire country looking for her on national television. We see that Nick has hired a lawyer (Tyler Perry) and tries to clear his name or something (it's hard to remember because it's so inconsequential). Then... sigh. The most memorable scene. Amy has sex and kills Neil Patrick Harris as he bleeds all over her naked body, and then returns home to Nick, still all bloody (see pic above) and convinces everyone that her ex abducted her and she managed to escaped. She also realizes through Nick's TV-name-clearing performance that she actually does love him after all. She goes so far as to impregnate herself with his sperm from the sperm bank. Even though he's super pissed off and doesn't love her at all, he stays with her and THE END.
Whew. Do you see how exhausting this is? Do you see how its the narrative equivalent of googling an antonym for the word taut? First of all, the presence of the redneck motel robbers and Amy's obsessive ex-boyfriend is completely arbitrary and entirely forced. It is very clear that Gillian Flynn had no idea what to do with the story after revealing that Amy faked her own death. Desi becomes one of the most important characters in the movie, yet his importance is an afterthought, and the only reason the movie didn't completely fall out of the minds of its viewers is most likely because of his outrageously graphic sex-throat-cut death scene.
Secondly, who is Amy anyway? I have rarely seen such a poorly developed character in the history of anything, and therefore, it's intensely problematic that she's a female. Here me out.
Let's say we believe in her character up to the end of the BIG REVEAL. I believed it! She becomes tragically unhappy after leaving her home city for a small boring town, is financially and fidelity-wise betrayed by her frankly idiotic husband, becomes dangerously resentful, and she's amazingly intelligent, so we root for her when she manages to successfully frame him and get away. But then things go downhill for her. I envision a different second half of this story in which Nick is left behind to rot in prison, and Amy never achieves anything in her life and is slowly reeled into a life of destitution and probably prostitution, even though she did everything right in life. OR, the story could have transformed into a pseudo-horror story in that Amy, having made the tragic mistake of committing a singular immoral and deceptive act, endures a series of violent and horrific misfortunes and outcomes because somehow, she cosmically deserves them. In other words, all the characters are bad and get theirs in the end.
Alas, no such luck. Instead, we get nothing that satisfies our sense of solid storytelling, as the plot betrays its own set-up. By the end, Amy is shown to be quite the little sociopath. And then she falls back in love with Nick. And even knocks herself up with his sperm. So she's either a sociopath or a bright, indecisive, yet scorned woman. Which one is it? She can't be both. Why would she go through hell and high water to ruin a man only to get back with him? Why does her character have to be so ambiguous? Oh right, because the book is post-modern drivel.
Speaking of which, my final point: what is the lesson here? What are we supposed to take away from this supposedly meaningful and culturally relevant film? Some possibilities:
1) Marriage sucks and is a sham.
2)The media sucks and is a sham.
3) Men suck and ruin women's lives. They are either lazy cheaters or obsessive and dangerous sex-maniacs. Therefore a woman should totally take revenge on them and become "independent" when the time calls for it. However, ultimately men are worth sticking with because, you know, love and babies.
4) Women are unpredictable and totally and utterly conniving and diabolical.
Do you see the problem here? If the lesson involves the first two, Gone Girl says nothing new or original about two topics we have long known to be true. If its lesson is the third possibility, then its super sexist and doesn't hold together.
No, I believe that what most people took from Gone Girl is the last lesson. This "psychological mystery thriller" encompasses every typical American man's worst fears:
-You don't really know how to please your wife and will never satisfy her financially.
-She will become demanding and nag the shit out of you.
-If you cheat, you will get caught and punished.
-She will convince everyone you are physically abusive when you are not.
-Your wife is smarter than you and will "trap" you in the end, so you can never escape.
-If your ultimate sexual fantasy with your dream girl comes true, she will slaughter you mid-ecstasy.
-The baby is not yours.
This is what Gone Girl is really about, and I can't for the life of me tell if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Is it a satire? Is it just a fun movie to watch over and over again because Ben Affleck sucks in general and stands there stupidly and helplessly throughout? I know one thing for sure: it is not empowering for women from a female standpoint. But when has that ever stopped the masses from popularizing shitty and offensive art?
C+
No comments:
Post a Comment