Gone Girl Extra Credit

Nick arriving home on his anniversary expecting to see his wife, Amy waiting for him but instead happening upon a scene of a struggle in his home. After the police are called it is concluded that Amy has disappeared, sparking a full scale search effort by the police, Amy’s friends and family,  and the entire town. As the story progresses the public turns against Nick and begin to accuse him of being responsible for Amy’s disappearance, the audience also begins to doubt him when it is discovered that he had been having an affair with one of his students for over a year. Throughout Nick’s struggle to discover the truth behind his wife’s disappearance we are given stories of Amy’s past with Nick, showing how they met and how their life slowly moved from one of perfect to one where she feared for her life. In Nick’s pursuit for the truth he follows the scavenger hunt Amy had left for him before she want missing and the story climaxes with Nick’s discovery that Amy was behind her disappearance all along and the audience gets to see the true Amy for the first time instead of the artificial Amy she had created in her diary entries to frame her husband. We then watch as Nick tries to use the media to get Amy to return to him because he knows without her return he will surly be prosecuted for her disappearance. Amy explains her masterful plan and we slowly see how she is deviating from it, and after she is robbed we see her lure in her former high school boyfriend to save her. We watch as Amy realizes she wants to return to Nick and we are aghast at the lengths she goes to in order to make herself appear as the hero upon her return, going so far as to slaughter her former boyfriend and frame him for her abduction. We are left with a queasiness as we see Amy return to her husband and pull of one final act of manipulation, artificially inseminating and impregnating herself, to forever assert her control over Nick and once and for all gain authority of the story of Amazing Amy.

This movie very closely followed the book, so much so that it even had the day count appear in the bottom left corner of the screen to show how many days had passed since Amy’s disappearance in each scene, similar to the chapter heading in the book. Both the movie and book had an amazing ability to warp the observer’s perception of the characters and force them to sympathize with certain characters through proliferating misconceptions and the facades of those characters. The movie took the contrasting entry’s of Amy’s diary and Nick’s experiences in the current day, that appeared in the book as back and forth chapter narrators, and beautifully followed this constant switching of viewpoint by showing scenes of Nick in present day and then having flashbacks of “Amy’s” past with her voice narrating the scenes and showing her writing the events in her diary. I am so happy that the movie successfully had the same climactic effect the book achieved with the bid revile that Amy faked her own disappearance, you could hear the audience gasp when they saw her riding on the highway in her run down car. My favorite part of the book that I’m very glad they kept in the movie was the candidness and attitude of Go. My favorite line of the book occurs when Go suggests what Nick should get Amy for their anniversary, seeing as the theme for five-year anniversaries is wood, saying, “You go home and fuck her brains out. Then you take your penis and smack her in the face with it, and you say, "There's some wood, bitch!" I almost couldn’t contain myself when the actress playing Go delivered this live perfectly, and throughout the movie she continued to portray my favorite character with breathtaking accuracy. Overall, I was very pleased that the movie followed the book so closely, but not totally surprised seeing as the author of Gone Girl got to write the screenplay for the movie.

            There were some differences, although small, in the movie compared to the book. The movie omitted the part of Amy’s scavenger hunt in which Nick visits the old town, and instead moves directly to when Nick figures out that the clue is leading him to his father’s house. This change does not really affect the storyline and was obviously made to save time so I have no qualms about the movie removing this excursion. Another small, and quite, insignificant difference is that in the book Amy cuts her wrists in order to get the blood on the kitchen floor to stage the crime scene, but in the movie she used a needle and siphons the flood out of her arm. Again, this is not a very important change and if I had to guess the change was made because the cutting of someone’s wrists is a more graphic and controversial image than using a needle and blood bags. Another piece from the book they omitted was the backstory with Amy and her high school “stalker,” this story was the first example of Amy’s plots to ruin the people closest to her and although I liked how it created a more in depth view of how long Amy had been manipulating and destroying people the movie didn’t seem empty without it. In addition they left out Nick’s drunken interview with the college reporter which in the book is influential in turning the public’s opinion in Nick’s favor, but this scene was obviously omitted to save time and further dramatize Nick’s big interview as his only chance to get the public on his side. Finally, I though the decision to make Nick’s lawyer black in the movie and completely omit his wife was an odd one because it seemed like they simply mixed the lawyer from the book, who was white, and his black wife, who was the one in the book who prepared Nick for his big interview. This change didn’t really affect the plot of the movie and therefore I was not greatly opposed to it, plus I in general was very happy with the actor they got to play the layer. Overall, none of the variations from the book were outrageous and the movie did an amazing job of adapting the text into visual scenes. 

Overall, the movie surpassed the book in its portrayal of the relationship and interaction between Amy and Desi. The movie emphasized Desi’s design to reform Amy and transform her back into his perfect image of her as a young girl. Similar to how Scotty forces Judy to change her appearance in Vertigo, by getting her new clothes and hair, Desi makes Amy return to the fictitious image of the cool girl she had played for so many years and had since had the pleasure of shedding on the run. Desi reinstituted Amy’s image by making her die her hair back to blond and cut it, buying her new clothes to wear around his house, making her stay inside so her skin would return to it’s pale homeostasis instead of it’s tainted tanned state, and depriving her of food so she could shed the weight she had gained in her hiatus. Desi treats Amy as a doll in his dollhouse that he can dress and manipulate to his deepest desires. Amy uses this obsession to lure Desi into her trap and seduces him into having sex with her so that she can frame him for her abduction and make it look like her bound her and repeatedly raped her. The final scene of Amy’s plan of fabricating this abduction so she can return to Nick, in which she has sex with Desi and then kills him is shocking enough in the book but the movie brings it to a hole new level. You see Amy take a butter knife and slaughter Desi, repeatedly slashing him, with his blood pouring and splattering everywhere, soaking her in his blood. This scene of horror was elevated in its cinematic representation and was the high point of the movie.

Although I enjoyed the movie very much overall the ending was not as satisfying as it was in the book. In the book you see the true perversion of Amy and the lengths she is willing to go to keep control over Nick and over the public’s perception of her. In the book you see Nick striving to build up evidence against her, working with the detective Ronda to gather evidence and writing a book with the entire account of his discovery of his wife’s insanity and her fabrication of her own abduction. Nick is ready to try and fight to bring Amy to justice when she pulls out a back-up plan she had put in place years ago, she uses the sperm he had frozen and had thought had been destroyed and artificially inseminates herself so she is carrying their child. Knowing that Nick will not risk the like of his child she has effectively assured her control over his actions and has silenced him forever guaranteeing that she is the only one with the power to create and propagate the story she wants the public to hear. The book does an amazing job of showing the masterfulness and villainous of Amy’s calculated action, but sadly the movie does not communicate this as well. In the book you are let into the perverted mind of Amy and are confronted with her desire to lead an artificial life with Nick in which they both act out the fictitious roles they promised to play in marriage and live “happily ever after.” Regardless, the movie did an amazing job of adapting the novel, Gone Girl, bringing you inside the twisted relationship of Nick and Amy Dunne, the couple who truly can’t live with or without each other.