When my wife and I were in pre-marital counseling, our counselor told us that most marriages go through their most difficult times from five and seven years after the wedding. That’s when divorces tend to happen. The conflict and difficulty are unavoidable, he said, because people change. But the way to stay together is to find the resources you need to get through from within the marriage. When people look outside of the relationship to fill these needs or comfort these pains, that’s what opens unbridgeable chasms between spouses.
I could hardly imagine a better illustration of such a chasm than Gone Girl. On the fifth anniversary of Nick and Amy Dunne, she goes missing. A smashed table and a spot of blood in the kitchen suggest a violent kidnapping, but other clues point to something more complicated. Did Nick murder Amy? The first part of the film mounts evidence against him, yet we’ve been watching him the whole time and he doesn’t seem to have done it. His case is litigated on tabloid talk shows, and he becomes an overnight celebrity. The film skillfully draws us into the same question, and thus into the same tabloid audience: did he or didn’t he?
The second part of the film gives us the answer. So, here’s my SPOILER ALERT, but the latter part of Gone Girl includes many more twists and thrills that I won’t tell you about. Amy has staged her own disappearance and set up Nick as her patsy, all in an elaborate revenge plot against him. Their marriage was full of chasms. As she explains, she liked him when he was trying to impress her, and then he reverted to his real self whom she can’t stand. Then she caught him cheating with one of his students, a much younger woman, and now she’s so angry she’s trying to get him executed. The relatively unknown actress Rosamund Pike plays her, but Pike will certainly be known after this. Amy Dunne will be remembered as one of the creepiest villains in cinema, Lecter-like in her crazed, almost-superhuman evil.
I’m left with substantial questions about how what the filmmakers are trying to say through that evil. Some critics have interpreted the film as being terribly misogynistic, saying that Amy represents women in general. That seems unlikely to me. More have seen the Dunnes’ marriage as representative of all marriages, and that seems more believable. Amy says as much but, then, she’s not exactly a trustworthy voice on the subject.
I accept this ice-cold, cynical interpretation because of who’s behind the camera. David Fincher directed Gone Girl, he who made Se7en, Fight Club, and The Social Network, and who is one of the primary producers behind Netflix’s House of Cards. The man has a very jaded view of humanity, and Gone Girl is the most effective vehicle for his misanthropy so far. Marriage is such a personal, relatable phenomenon, and the film seems to say that it only works by deception.
In fact, it’s interesting to compare the Dunnes’ marriage with that of Frank and Claire Underhill, in House of Cards. Amy wants Nick to live a lie, and they both engage in elaborate and destructive deceptions. The Underhills’ marriage is also based on lies — don’t worry, I won’t reveal them here — but they’re both in on the lies. The marriage “works”, in the cynical Fincher sense, because they partner in deceiving everyone else, share their secrets with no one else, and equally pursue their common goals with no quarter. They’re like Richard III and Lady MacBeth, together. I get the sense that Amy Dunne wants a man like Frank Underhill.
Gone Girl is an excellent presentation of Fincher’s jaded worldview, and I admire the film’s exquisite cinematography and character development. But, I vehemently disagree with it. The film seems to say that people are fundamentally selfish, and that agape-love that seeks the good of the beloved before one’s own is impossible. Based on my experience of humanity, most of all my own marriage, I agree with our pre-marriage counselor rather than Amy of Gone Girl: love is real, and a loving, honest marriage has the resources within it to keep the chasms narrow and build the bridges to cross them. I put my faith in the God who calls himself Love and demonstrates what that means.
You might also enjoy these reviews of Gone Girl:
Christianity Today
Hollywood Jesus
Larsen on Film
Reel World Theology
Think Christian
Tinsel