Gone Girl

[SPOILERS for Gone Girl]

Gone Girl was better than I expected, in unexpected ways.

There aren’t enough clear-eyed, female sociopaths in movies or television. We’ve got fuck-tons of crazy bitch characters, certainly, and countless man-eating succubi; in recent years, we even have a growing collection of AARP-eligible she-monsters, out to rip a hole in the world. (Your efforts have been noted, Jessica Lange.) But we don’t have many chicks who get to be complete bastards, just ‘cause.

That’s the first thing GG delivers. Not for our titular girl will there be a traumatic backstory, womb madness, or an abandonment complex run amok; she’s all unrepentant self-interest, self-aggrandizement, and self-sufficiency, wedged into a sexy-when-she-feels-like-it blonde package. She’s a rare beast, and nicely written to be the smartest person in the room, in every room. Gillian Flynn deserves credit for never degrading her creation with more than a narcissist’s delusional self-pity, and denying her any access to truly relatable tragedy. She’s just a horrible, fascinating, infuriating human being for no good reason, and that’s enough.

But there’s more: Flynn pulls off an equally surprising achievement in somehow tricking David Fincher into making a legitimately funny film. (Perhaps House of Cards empowered him, too.) IMDB may deem GG to be a “drama/mystery/thriller”, but I call it a dark comedy. It’s nasty in all the right ways, and wears a half-concealed grin while doing its dirt.

I watched Into The Woods this weekend, which generated these thoughts:

  1. Johnny Depp leverages his career investments better than any actor on the planet. Aside from the goings-on at The Viper Room, he spent most of the ’90s as a pretty, vulnerable, quasi-sexual weirdo, building up a massive stockpile of quirky good will, which he now uses to infuse his array of murderous barbers, hateful chocolatiers, drunken pirates, bizarre racial stereotypes, and child predators with what would normally be an incongrous hint of harmless whimsy. He gets away with roles few actors of his stature would even attempt, largely because he dedicated his youth to seeming innocuous. Genius.
  2. How is it that everyone lost their collective minds over Fifty Shades releasing on Valentine’s Day, while pretty much ignoring ITW coming out on Christmas? Given their MPAA ratings and the age-ranges of their respective audiences, I’m guessing more fragile minds were warped by watching a twelve year-old girl’s trip through the Rape Forest –and what basically amounts to another female character’s death-by-slut-shaming in said forest– than by sitting through two hours of Dakota Johnson trying to look nervous and excited.
  3. I was surprised by how little we hear from Rapunzel, until it occurred to me that emotionally-stunted kidnap victims –who have spent their lives with the matted yoke of oppression growing from their heads– probably deserve a bit of post-rescue downtime. She’s basically a brittle-haired Kimmy Schmidt, after all.

Somewhere off-camera, there’s an uptight crab with a little baton and a huge sense of entitlement, chiding her in a Jamaican accent with “This is what happens to daughters of Triton when they sneak off and grow legs behind Daddy’s back!

“And another thing, young lady— why a vagina, hm? Could have just been feet, you know! You don’t need no bajingo to walk around on the land! Who you trying to fool?! From now on, you staying under the sea and away from the D!”