My interpretation, having seen the movie, but not read the book was that largely as a result of how her parents(who came across to me as really parasitic). They basically kept building up this fantasy Amy which caused her to have both a ridiculously distorted sense of self-esteem and distorted expectations of others(notably Nick).
Oh, that would have been a great reveal. I think that would have been more interesting than the NYC boyfriend she accused of rape and less trite.
To your first paragraph, I think the movie made it clear that’s what she’d been doing her whole life playing a different character for different people. Like the way she says all those things to Desi about how with him she can talk about Proust, appealing to his vanity, and she clearly felt that’s how others behaved(like the way she was shouting at the TV set about how the mistress was dressed like a “mennonite” and covering up her “cum on my boobs”).
One thing I wasn’t sure about was why she decided to go back to Nick based on how he behaved on CNN.
Was the idea that she decided she liked the mini-celebrity she got from her parents “Amazing Amy” books and that she could turn the two of them into media stars with book deals and TV show appearances to keep them rich and famous?
It definitely might have been better if they had done more to make her seem manipulative and crazy.
At the end I didn’t feel much sympathy for Ben Affleck’s character at all really. Yeah, she’s crazy. . . honestly, I’ve been in relationships with crazy bitches and she doesn’t seem that bad. . . but for the one murder frame-up thing. See, Gone Girl is a dark comedy.
I never read the boo and I didn’t care for the movie. My thoughts:
- I never felt that Affleck did it. I think Fincher should have made him more moody and dangerous before the reveal. When the reveal occurred, it wasn’t shocking to me.
- I did, however, like how he was a flawed character.
- Pike’s escape was reasonable and losing her money to the rednecks was great. She was screwed.
- Pike’s murder of Desi was great. I didn’t expect it to be so visceral.
- Pike’s return to Affleck was ridiculous. Her story had a million holes that any decent cop would have seen through. This thread has raised many good points that the cops would have nailed her on. This wrecked the ending for me because in any reasonable world, she’d be in jail.
- I HATE Tyler Perry movies, but he was really good in this one.
- I’ve been waiting for Rosamund Pike to become a big star. Maybe this will be her breakthrough. She’s beautiful and a very good actress.
- I felt it was too long. They could have easily cut the bulk of the stuff around his dad. The cable news stuff was interesting and kinda funny (God, how I loathe Nancy Grace and her constant rush to judgement), but not fundamental except for the interviews.
In the end, just a below-average movie. Fincher is an amazing director and should be using his talents on more interesting work. This movie will have no lasting legacy unlike many of his other movies.
That’a an article by an expert on identity theft. He’s at most as authoritative a citation as Cayuga, unless Cayuga happens to be a mental health professional in which case Siciliano is actually less authoritative.
I think a more accurate statement would be that psychopath, sociopath and antisocial personality disorder are all related terms with imprecise meanings that will absolutely be used differently by different people, even different psychologists and psychiatrists. The terms psychopath and sociopath don’t have a clear generally agreed upon difference between them.
I actually like the way the movie suggested Amy had greatly underestimated Greta and Greta was sort of a white trash version of Amy with same gift of insight and manipulation.
The way Amy assumes that the man was the one who thought it up and pushed Greta into it, but Greta is like “I had to push him into this.” And especially the moment where Greta lists all the reasons she knows that Amy won’t go to the cops, “You say you’re named Nancy, but half the time you don’t even respond to it.”
BTW, was I the only one who thought it was weird that Amy would try and adopt such an obviously fake Louisiana accent that she’d have a difficult time maintaining.
We saw it tonight and haven’t really processed it yet. Good performances, especially by the wife and the twin sister, and it had a good pace with some decent tension. Some pretty large plot holes that required suspension of belief, but hey, it’s a movie.
Also, it was nice to see Kim Dickens again (Detective Boney), who played Joanie Stubbs in Deadwood. She did a good job of NOT being Joanie.
I enjoyed both the movie and the book, right up until the stupid ending. This isn’t the 1960s where cops might have relied solely on the claims of a well-heeled blonde. No, despite her fragility, a violent kidnapping occurred followed by a violent murder, and that means an investigation with actual fact-checking, if for no other reason than to ensure that: 1) Desi acted alone, and 2) She was officially cleared of any charges; 3) The investigation into her disappearance can officially close; and 4) To have a complete investigation, and findings, on hand for use in future civil lawsuits filed against his estate.
Had she sought Desi’s help from Day 1, and in the process set him up for a subsequent claim of kidnapping had she needed it, THAT might have been plausible because he’d have actually been in St. Louis to pick her up the day of her supposed kidnapping. He’d have actually been with her at the lakehouse for the month or so after her disappearance.
But the way the story was written, that she sought Desi’s help AFTER she’d been missing for several weeks, and only because she was out of money and desperate, made the ending completely and utterly implausible. First of all, the evidence she planted for story 1 simply didn’t fit story 2. The cleaned-up blood, the fact that there were no strange cars spotted in the neighborhood, the lack of ANY of Desi’s DNA in her home, even after a violent struggle… Nope, that wouldn’t have made any sense.
But most importantly, there is no way in this age of digital footprinting that she could have plausibly rewritten DESI’s life to corroborate her story. Wouldn’t it have been a true miracle if he’d have visited no friends or colleagues, made no phone calls, seen no housekeepers, attended no concerts or plays, posted no comments on the Dope, rented no Netflix movies, eaten in no restaurants, sent no emails sent from either of his homes…the entire time he was supposed to have been kidnapping Amy in St. Louis?
No flipping way.
And even if we’re to stomach the FBI being so grossly incompetent to see the holes in her story, this story was supposed to have echoed the Scott Peterson case, where the entire world watched as the story unfolded. They did a great job of showing how voracious the press was, and America’s appetite for a good story, while she was missing. Are we to believe that the second she returned, the Nancy Graces of the world would have just folded up shop and said, “Well, that’s it, folks! Amy’s home, let’s move on to the next blonde kidnapped woman…”
Hell, no! The story just got more intriguing because now you add in a millionaire stalker/rapist! Everyone from newspaper columnists to tv producers to amateur investigators would have been all over Desi’s corpse, putting together a timeline of the crime, and trying to piece together where and when he went wrong. And, in that process, they would have discovered holes, the most compelling one being that he wasn’t in St. Louis the day the kidnapping happened. And that nobody was at his lakehouse the weeks after she went missing, courtesy of his kickass security system.
Oh, and then someone would realize that this isn’t her first, but second claim of being bound to the bed and raped… And then someone would scratch their head and say, “Now tell me again why a fellow who doesn’t golf would order an expensive set of golf clubs? Do you think that maybe this chick is a tad nuts?”
Amy’s unraveling would have made a better ending, IMO. As it is, it’s just ridiculously implausible.
The best part of the movie was the shredding of Nancy Grace and the tabloid news.
Movie was OK but too long at the end.
Also I don’t think a hospital would send someone home still covered in blood. But I guess that was so they could have the shower scene.
I loved the book because of the writing. The diary was amazing, at first, as a subtle buildup to an ominous situation that the naive writer seems mostly unaware of. A dramatic irony where the character is oblivious of the situation but the audience is not. Poor darlin’! That bastard probably killed her!
Then second, when the diary is revealed to the reader to be a patiently constructed fake,
I was blown away. What good novel writing! Afterwards Amy takes over as a narrator also. Both Nick and Amy’s narration are internal dialogues, and each hangs together. I mean the narrator of ‘The Telltale Heart’ is a total loon who behaves unrealistically but, darn, if I don’t buy into it. I even enjoy the trip to crazyland with him.
When I heard a movie was planned I was thinking the plot is only a device to hang this great multiple voice writing on. Unless huge chunks of voiceover is planned 
how can the film be anything but the bare plot pulled out? It would be like admiring the bones of someone I found extraordinarily good-looking. So I wasn’t in a hurry to see it. I haven’t yet but I will. I get that books and movies are different art forms, but in this case my main enjoyment wasn’t plot, characters, theme, whatever; but the actual writing itself.
I saw it yesterday. Going in I knew only that Affleck’s wife went missing and he was the prime suspect. I also heard there was a twist of some kind.
What a disappointment.
I was on board up until the time Amy was shown to be alive after all. The lengthy explanation via voiceover of how she moved mountains to fake her death rubbed me the wrong way and all went downhill from there (although I did like the white trash pair who robbed her).
I would have much preferred if this were a straightforward whodunit; the film seemed to want to repeatedly tell me how clever and twisty it is. The character of Desi seemed to have walked in from another movie; that entire sequence felt patched- in and distracting.
Rosamund Pike (Amy) left no impression on me whatsoever, and Affleck was just OK. The detective (Kim Dickens) was very good, and Tyler Perry (who I’ve known by name only) was a pleasant surprise.
What lost me, ultimately, was the implausibility of the whole thing. Why would Amy go through all the trouble (and incredible risk) of orchestrating her death rather than just leave Nick (maybe I’m missing something here?).
She was aware of and concerned with the video cameras when she made her way to the front door all bloodied; what about the camera in the bedroom when she was ‘raped’? If the video showed her sobbing at the door, then surely it captured the bedroom scene just moments before. Why did she have a box cutter under the pillow? Why was Nick the only one to wonder where the blade came from? Et cetera.
This movie needed a re-write and a good editor.
mmm
1- If she just left,she wouldn’t get revenge and ‘make him pay’ for cheating on her and ruining her perfect fantasy world.
2-They show a clip earlier with her watching the camera feeds. They all seem to be pointing outward, not inside the house. That’s how she knew where to position herself for the fake crying and crotch burning.
That’s my take on it. She will now be able to profit from celebrity for herself. She realized that she did not need to proceed all the way to Nick’s literal destruction any longer, but merely to reenter the scene and establish a situation in which she is the one in control and at the center of attention and all those who know what she really did can do nothing about it.
Exactly. They’re security cameras, so they’re pointed at the doors. Desi isn’t a psycho with cameras recording his every move inside the house.
I remember her glancing up at a video camera during the sex scene; am I remembering incorrectly?
mmm
ETA: Also, wasn’t she crawling on the floor at one point (behind a couch) to temporarily avoid been seen by an interior camera?
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I don’t recall that.
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Yes, she was. I assumed it was for the same reason she headed to that particular corner, because in some areas the exterior cameras can see in the house.
That said, I’m on board with your concerns. For me, it was the multitude of cameras that would have traced his comings and goings for the month. They would have revealed her lack of presence over that time.
And please don’t argue that she could have erased all those hours. She is never shown to be some kind of hacker. There would have been a record somewhere.
Well, I liked this movie a lot more after seeing it last night than I do this afternoon after reading this thread! 
I agree the lack of investigation into the kidnapping is the biggest flaw in the resolution… in the real world, Amy would be f-ed as investigators, both amateur and professional, find flaw after flaw in her story.
New word for the vocabulary: Twincest.
During the film, I wondered why Amy was keeping the wad o’ cash with her even when she went putt-putting. And when she spat in Gretna’s drink, I thought “you know, that girl needs to get even somehow.”
But really, to me the biggest problem (which I thought about during the movie) was that I didn’t think Amy’s plan made a bit of sense once she took the “kill myself” option off the table (and was it ever really on the table? From what I remember, she had question marks at the end of all those “kill myself” post-it notes.) She’s supposed to be dead, no means of contacting her parents, with maybe $10k to her name, no way to pass a background check (no fake SSN, no fake drivers license, nothing like that)… what’s her plan once she decided to live?
I did think the movie complicated things unnecessarily by adding the video cameras (which didn’t exist at all in the book). I have to assume that Desi’s video feeds only save a few days or weeks of footage or Amy is screwed. It’s much less complicated on the book. The only real risk to Amy’s new story is if Desi has a stone-clad alibi for the morning of the kidnapping. He’s generally shown lazing about doing nothing so it’s not much of a risk. Plus, he’s not around to offer any exculpatory evidence.
As for keeping her money belt on her person, in the book the hotel is a lot crappier and she doesn’t trust the locks. Also in the book, she thinks Greta may recognize her but she isn’t sure if she’s just being paranoid.