Cliche Ridden Gone Girl by David Fincher(Novel& Screenplay by Gillian Flynn)

Read review of GONE GIRL  NYRB and I are very congruent.  Zoe Heller critiques the film's cliches...which was my overall impression.  She concludes her review:  “The problem with Amy is not that she acts in vicious and reprehensible ways, or even that her behavior lends credence to certain misogynist fantasies.  The problem is that she isn’t really a character, but rather an animation  of a not very interesting idea about the female capacity for nastiness...the main theme of their (feminists and other women)allegations(complaints) has been that Amy's character endorses a host of antifeminist myths including the calumny that women are wont to maliciously invent rape charges.  (this is a particularily irresponsible misrepresentation, it's been claimed , because statistics show the incidence of false rape accusations to be very rare."  This is where I turned off the film, which I had downloaded...as a start to catch up with nominations for the  awards.  

 Zoe Heller continues,   “The principles of (Flynn) her invention are consistent with the method of “Gone Girl” as a whole.  In lieu of any interest in the textures, the details, the ambiguities of the observed human behavior, it starts from the delusional premise that the goodness of women and the loveliness of marriage are potent modern shibboleths and then sets up a group of gender avatars to “prove” the opposing clichés: women are the deadliest of the species and marriage is hell.  The film is a piece of silliness, not powerful enough in the end to engender proper “disapproval”:  only wonder at its coarseness and perhaps mild dismay at its critical success.” 

I am not going to say much more than that it troubles me to think this is so popular in America, and so American  in its reliance on media to shape images; its portrayal of lack of reverence for everything for which we need to care -- love, home, families, relationships, marriage, and one another.   I really did not like this film because it moves from acts of malice to downright visciousness and what is worse through cliches.  Read Zoe Heller's review and do not support its revenues by going to see it!