Gone Girl — Page 4

When Amy and Nick meet, they have an affinity. Amy describes at length how easily the relationship developed and how they shared a certain temperament.

My opinion is that Nick is a thoughtless and emotionally lazy person. His relationship with Amy developed because she was a pretty, rich, "minor celebrity" perfectly suiting his superficial and remote nature.

So much of the mordant humor arises out of Nick's shock that even with a moral compass as low as his is, there are terrifying places people will go that even he couldn't imagine.

Tyler Perry begs Nick not to give a TV interview because he knows the client never wins. That Nick persuades both the interviewer and the public both impresses and shocks Perry. Nick certainly has sociopathic tendencies.

And I think the reason that the move is resonating in such a strong way is that there's a certain culture of non trust at the moment. People have hundreds of "friends" online they don't really know. Online dating is how many people are now meeting, but nervousness about the genuineness of potential coupling creeps out even people actively using dating services.

I also think many people struggle with being honest. This movie and the book are a cautionary tale for people who take emotional shortcuts in life. I do think Nick is a victim, but one with a borderline personality that keeps him from being a sympathetic character.

As much as I look back on the film and try to find fault with Nick, I just can't. And maybe because I've been in a long term emotionally abusive/manipulative relationship in the past. I know what it does to a person. And I see that in Nick. He's not a perfect man/character and he certainly has flaws (who doesn't). But within the context of the main story here, Amy is the villain.

Even if Nick is a thoughtless and emotionally lazy person who was only attracted to Amy because of her "status", does that mean he should have endured everything she put him through? If we reverse that and say that a woman was drawn to a man because of his status in society and he turned out to be manipulative and cruel to her, but placed the blame on her...well imagine the backlash there.

You brought up the interview which I thought was a great example of how well Nick had adjusted to being able to be exactly the kind of man he knew she wanted, and it worked. I don't know how you got that he had any sociopathic tendencies from that. He was playing HER game.

You brought up the interview which I thought was a great example of how well Nick had adjusted to being able to be exactly the kind of man he knew she wanted, and it worked. I don't know how you got that he had any sociopathic tendencies from that. He was playing HER game.

That's exactly what I got out of it as well. I didn't see anything sociopathic or borderline about Nick at all. In that example, he was acting on a very specific and unusual set of circumstances. It did not appear that he was demonstrating a normal pattern of behavior for his character. And as for characterizing him as emotionally lazy or having a low moral compass, what I think is genius about both the novel and the film is that it certainly wants to lead you in that direction (and the use of the media as preemptive judge and jury) BEFORE the audience has all the facts. When all is said and done and we know what we know about Amy, it really brings to question how much of Nick's behavior is a response to a highly calculated and manipulative sociopath. Nick is flawed and did not consciously know what he was dealing with, but Amy already had an established pattern and history of her sociopathic tendencies, so it's not wrong to assume that her plans were completely self-serving and destructive from the start of their relationship.

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[Thora Birch eyeroll]

No clue, the ending didn't seem vague at all to me.

If I understood Roxy it isn't that the ending is unclear but that it's not a standard Hollywood ending where one side is vindicated and other destroyed, and, in that respect, it is more like a European movie.

All of that is true, which is for many of us, a big plus rather than problem.

What a POS movie this is. Did feminism never happen? Did Adrian Lyne make this male fantasy? All I knew about this thing going in was that there was a POV change and a narrative shift. The whole time I kept thinking to myself: A WOMAN WROTE THIS SCREENPLAY AND ADAPTED IT FROM HER INCREDIBLY SUCCESSFUL NOVEL?

Seriously, you can never go broke portraying a retrograde aggrieved male fantasy.

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That's what I am saying, it's a nightmare fantasy but a fantasy nonetheless. It's anti-feminist claptrap and I am just flabbergasted.

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Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters … the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad – trampy, vampy, bitchy types – but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho bitch is just crazy – she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness.

This quote of hers is all I really need to know. Yup. It IS anti-feminist claptrap. There are many many wonderful examples from film noir of women characters who are bad because they're bad. And does the character only fake ONE rape in the novel? Did Flynn up the game for her movie adaptation? "Gone Girl" is the most anti-feminist mainstream hit movie since "Zero Dark Thirty."

I can easily picture Gillian Flynn and Kathryn Bigelow posing for those "I Don't Need Feminism" pictures.

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Updated On: 11/7/14 at 12:34 PM

In storytelling, not in life.
There are not only two fabricated rapes in the novel, there is an additional campaign by Amy in her past to smear someone..... a woman.

Updated On: 11/7/14 at 02:32 PM

There are not three phony rape allegations in the novel.
Amy's youthful smear campaign against another young girl had nothing to do with rape.

We disagree that Amy is the product of an anti-feminist agenda. (I would agree with you that a case can easily be made that Nick's tragedy and Desi's and Tommy's victimization explore and resonate with male persecution fantasies, but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.)

But, in any case, you're welcome.

Updated On: 11/8/14 at 06:52 PM