A Woman Scorned-American Psycho #324-Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike’s Gone Girl

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, from the book by Gillian Flynn, 2014

 

No question modern marriage, I am speaking of modern twenty-first century heterosexual marriage here I will leave the same-sex variety alone until we have more anecdotal evidence but I have a feeling that will be a parallel universe, is a tough haul. Very tough in the case of seemingly well-matched America’s sweethearts couple, Nick (played by a laid back Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (she nee Elliot daughter of the famed Amazing Amy children’s books writers and maybe that will give us a clue to where things went wrong), in the film under review, Gone Girl, based on the book by the same name by Gillian Flynn. Now I am no stranger to the stresses of marital bliss having wed and shed three wives the old-fashioned way (divorce and some alimony) and have now determined that it is wiser (and cheaper) to just finish out my days with companions rather than wives. Apparently Amy Elliot Dunn (played with sardonic verve by Rosamund Pike) had a different take on the matter and despite her Type A Harvard-etched accomplishments she has joined the pantheon of cinematic American psychos (although it is not absolutely necessary to have an Ivy League degree to fit into that category).                

On the surface as the beginning flashbacks by Nick and Amy of their takes on about went wrong in order to fill us on how thing went off-track appears to be an old-fashioned vanilla marriage filled with the normal stresses of wedded bliss, You know both mates working in their respective professions, making love in the off moments and living out there in dead-end suburbia trying to avoid that counting off the years of marriage fate which seems to be closing in on them. Between losing jobs, moving from high-style New York City to Podunk Missouri to nurse Nick’s mother, after five years of marriage though the wheels were starting to come off.

So yes you can blame the Great Recession of the Bush-Obama years, blame the vicissitudes brought on by five years of marriage and blame the lonely crowd-ness of suburban living although I personally blame those star-struck parents but Amy has had an epiphany about Nick and their marriage, a devious one to boot. But who are we kidding it had nothing to do with economics, psychology, personality, or any such like it was another, younger woman, a junior college student for Chrissake that set dear Amy off after seeing them together one night coming out of Nick’s (purchased with her dough, ouch). Yeah, this is the woman scorned theme that had run through a ton of films since they started making them which we should have been hip to all along.              

Here is how it played out though because Amy really did plan her revenge for Nick’s boorishness and infidelity with Type-A zeal. Simple, on their fifth anniversary Amy went missing from their house when Nick came back after being at his downtown bar which his sister who he is very close to runs (and like I said Amy had financed). Then through the cinematic device of teased-out flashbacks we find out what this American average married couple were really up to. Amy was not just “missing” missing though but had set up the scene up in their house so it looked like Nick was so bent on being rid of his wife even a rookie cop coming to investigate could figure it out, although in this case it was actually a savvy female detective who put the two and two together that put Nick behind bars.

Amy did a beautiful job, a job any ordinary psycho would be proud of. A job they will be talking about for years, maybe somebody will grab a Ph.D. out of the thing. She really had put Nick in a box, a big old frame, from the look of things, jumping up her insurance policy to a big number shortly before disappearing, buying tons of stuff on credit in his name and stashing it at his sister’s house, leaving blood in the house, leaving evidence that she was pregnant, and a telltale diary hidden in a well-placed spot that explained her fears that Nick will kill her. The gone, gone girl, was gone. By her actions Nick, finally figuring out that everything was closing in on him as a wife murderer was all set despite hiring a crack criminal defense lawyer to take the big step-off in death penalty Missouri.     

Then Amy has another epiphany, not uncommon among the psycho set. Nick, now knowing that Amy has set the big frame-up for him as preclude to the big set-off in death penalty Missouri, now knowing that all the evidence points to the fact that she was alive and well and meant him every harm went on  the counter-offensive. Nick went on talk television which had taken Amy scorned to its bosom and used a popular talk show to make his confession of infidelity and contrition public. A not uncommon occurrence in these confessional age days although usually not in a murder case. Amy, who by this time had while hiding deep underground been ripped off of her cash stash by a low-rent couple who lived in her hide-out complex where she was staying turned to an ex-high school boyfriend who never got over her for help and was staying in his isolated summer house, saw the broadcast and changed her mind about Nick, wanted him back.

Of course the circumstances where Amy had supposedly been murdered by Nick left things a little dicey for their reunion so in a fit of mad genius she set up and killed, gruesomely killed, that ex-boyfriend claiming he had raped her. Nice touch Amy. Nick knowing that the rape was a set-up tried to tell that story but the public atmosphere of Amy’s return, their “joyous” televised reunion trumped that savage knowledge. Despite Nick’s fervent desire to leave he was caught in her web, doubly caught since she had made herself pregnant through artificial insemination. Good luck, Nick, you are going to need it. As for the rest of us we should take Nick’s attorney’s advice as he walked away from the case since his man was off the hook “don’t piss your spouse off.” I would add perhaps spreading newspaper around your bed to forewarn you of an advancing unhinged spouse just to be on the safe side.