“Disappeared” by Gillian Flynn as a diagnosis of modern marriage
text: Lisa birger
In the rental is about to be released "Vanished" David Fincher - the film version of one of the most popular novels of recent years, the book of the same name Gillian Flynn 2012. If you believe already appeared reviews of the film, he is not so far gone from the book: the same plot turns, which would envy any track “Formula 1 ″, the same change the image of the main characters, who several times in the same story have time to change the face . And most importantly - the film, like the book, regularly deals with exposing or, if you will, explaining the institution of marriage in the twenty-first century. Obviously, the film will be watched by everyone - but Flynn’s book came out in a rather rapid Russian translation (haste prevented adequately transferring all the author’s language games to Russian, and there are many of them) last year. Let's start with her.
The trouble is that any conversation about the "Disappeared" rests on the spoiler - it is almost impossible to talk about it without fear of spoiling the reader's pleasure from the plot. We just have to say that the placement of pieces on the board on the front pages is this: on the five-year anniversary of Nick and Amy's marriage, the wife disappears, leaving behind only traces of struggle in the living room, and the husband becomes the main suspect in a possible murder case . Then Nick and Amy change roles several times: a wolf in sheep's clothing turns out to be a sheep in a wolf's skin, and an innocent victim grows teeth. Throughout the novel, each one pulls the blanket over himself, trying to tell his story. Both heroes are writers: they steal smoothly, come along okay, and there can be no trust in their words. But the trouble is not only that.
The marriage of Nick and Amy, falling apart before our eyes with flashes of flashbacks, is practically a metaphor for any marriage in the 21st century. Yesterday they were fashionable New York dudes with their own home and stable earnings on magazine articles (Nick works like a cultural observer, Amy writes tests at all). But the crisis and unemployment drove them home to Nick, in the gray outback of Missouri, where husbands sit in the taverns, and wives cook cheap and nourishing homemade soups for days, where they put a lot of potatoes. Nick opens the bar and goes about his business, and his wife, sitting alone at home, is filled with poison until he starts to hate everyone and everything. Or, if you change the perspective and look at Amy's eyes, Nick, opening a bar for his wife’s money, indifferently drowns sorrows in bourbon, and his poor wife, left alone at home, struggles to pretend to be the ideal housewife. But all without success.
In the lyrical moments, both heroes admit that they married each other's ideal projections.
Any answer to the question "What is wrong with marriage?" Flynn has a finished picture-illustration. All women bitches? Of course, Amy is the best proof of that! All men goats? Just look at Nick - goats, and some more! In lyrical moments, both heroes admit that they were married to each other’s ideal projections, that marriage began to crack when real people began to appear behind these ideals. But this, they say, is not their fault. This time has gone like this - a time of great pretense. "A very difficult epoch. Each of us collects one stroke from different personalities, who have no number, instead of remaining themselves. And among the common pretense, how can we talk about the kinship of souls? After all, we do not have real souls."
To this remark, Nick, in general, is reduced to the whole novel - in the new century the idea of "soul relatedness", a bond made in heaven, is meaningless. In the Flynn novel, heroes were writers constantly reinventing themselves. In the Fincher film, they obviously became actors replaying themselves. Where they cease to portray something of themselves, any relationship, in general, must end. What can they hold? Some kind of perverted logic of mutual suffering. Each of the heroes is ready for this own metaphor. Nick calls his wife "Möbius's poisonous ribbon." Amy explains that her spikes blend perfectly with her husband’s stab wounds. Who killed someone here - let it be incomprehensible to the very last page. Why are they all together - that's where the real thriller.