“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.”
- Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl.
I very rarely get excited about screen adaptations of books I’m yet to read, let alone willing to go to the cinema and pay £24059240 or however much it is now to watch it. I’m one of those annoying types who’d always rather read the book than watch the movie, and no doubt tell you that repeatedly (sorry not sorry). Alas, there is always an exception to the rule and damn, did I pick a good one.
My decision to go see Gone Girl was simply due to the fact it’s a David Fincher murder mystery, and what could possibly be a better way to spend a Friday night? As with all of Fincher’s movies, Gone Girl did not disappoint.
Adapted from Gillian Flynn’s novel, Gone Girl is a harrowing exploration of the illusions we create throughout our lives and the impact they have as our real selves seep into reality. We traverse the dynamics of a relationship as it shifts from passionate beginnings to a subdued marriage and finally to… Well, a nightmare. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and his wife ‘Amazing’ Amy (Rosamund Pike) transform from charming, carnal romantics into two people reluctantly stuck together in stagnant misery, which is where our story beings.
Where’s Amy?
The film itself feels as though it’s split into two acts. Throughout the first I found myself bored, fidgety and really quite disappointed. I kept rolling my eyes at Ben Affleck’s wooden acting and praying that grossly idyllic romantic scenes would come to an end before I threw up. We are introduced to Nick, a Missouri-born bar owner with a penchant for looking as miserable as sin and his sister Margo (Carrie Coon) who looks a bit like the headmistress out of School of Rock. They exchange banter about what a crappy human Nick is, which is then reinforced by the fact he drives home to let his cat in despite the fact he just downed a glass of bourbon at 11am.
As Nick enters his inexplicably large and lovely home - which once belonged to his mother who I assume was in the mafia - he notices a table has been smashed and that his wife is gone without a trace. We spend the next hour and a half flitting back and forth between Nick dealing with the police, public and media in the present, and flashbacks formed from Amy’s diary. It turns out the two lost their jobs as writers in New York during the recession and eventually had to move to Missouri to take care of Nick’s dying mother. As time passes, Amy begins to feel unloved, unfulfilled, abandoned and eventually even frightened as Nick retreats further and further away from her and the man he’d been when they fell in love. From her perspective, Amy is the victim of a distant husband who wants her out of his way despite the fact she aches to be loved by him again.
In the present, Nick is doing an absolutely awful job of appearing worried about his missing wife. At no point did I believe he was just shy and misunderstood, he just comes across as a detached, grumpy asshole. There’s one scene where he’s in his home with Detective Rhonda Boney (Kim Dickens/ my favourite character in the movie) and she tells him that a) his wife’s blood was all over the kitchen floor but was mopped up and b) according to his credit card statement - credit cards that Amy pays for with her trust fund assumably - he’d bought a load of stuff for himself just before Amy disappeared. Out of those two pieces of information, Nick finally breaks his stony-faced, unresponsive persona to get angry about identity theft. He’s genuinely rubbish at portraying a concerned husband and generally unlikeable, which is why the media begin calling him a murderer and turning everyone against him.
So far it’s entertaining, but it’s lacking that extra something that would make it unique or memorable. It seems like your typical he-said, she-said plot line wrapped around the usual tightening coil of a murder-mystery. Throughout it appears the real villains are the mainstream media who victimise Amy and portray Nick as an incestuous murderer, profiting from the pain and misery the couple face and using their influence to ruin lives.
Nevertheless, you’ll frantically attempt to answer the critical question: why didn’t Amy just get a job when they moved to fill her time or get a divorce did Nick kill Amy?
What lingers within us behind the illusions we create?
What unfolds throughout what I’d consider the second and much more interesting half is a bizarre concoction of insatiable malice and bitter love that will probably leave you reeling for days. I very rarely physically recoil during movies, but I’m pretty sure I even yelped during parts of this one. My hands were over my eyes, over my heart or clinging onto my boyfriend who sat cringing beside me. He would later ask me to “never do that, ever.”
Every question you’ve asked becomes irrelevant, because everything we’ve learnt about Nick and Amy is a lie. This isn’t a tale about love and murder, it’s the story of a psychotic wife reacting to a cheating, lazy husband. Amy is not a victim, but she is certainly not a hero. There are no heroes in this story. Ultimately, the question becomes: what is expected of a wife and of a husband? Or more importantly, what are we to do if our expectations are not met?
To get to the root of this story we must again consider illusions. Amy and Nick created illusions when they met; better versions of themselves to attract and keep each other, but like all things those illusions dissolve over time leaving only echoing voids in the relationship where Amy screams and pleads to be recognised.
Later, Nick is forced to create an illusion for the media because who he really is is unresponsive and unlikeable, and the media in turn create an illusion of him as a murderer because it’s more appealing to the masses. Amy has a history of concocting illusions which continue to grow in severity due to the fact she is genuinely bonkers, culminating in her return to Nick after slicing Neil Patrick Harris’ throat with a box cutter. I told you: bonkers.
Where illusions and falsities run riot nothing is fair and no one is honest, but if we concoct the perfect mask we can appear perfect to anyone. We can be smarter, more beautiful, more passionate or innocent, victimised and abused depending on what the circumstances require. There is one particular speech Amy gives about being the ‘cool girl’ which will undoubtedly strike a chord with many viewers. Amy and Nick’s romance becomes a story of conditional love in which the vows of marriage are upheld not because of love or loyalty but blackmail and bitterness. It’s all an illusion, but illusions are precisely what Amy wants: for her to be happy, the illusion of a loving husband and perfect family must continue forever.
If there is one lesson to take away from this film let it be this: there is no fury like a woman’s scorn.