Re: *** Official GONE BABY GONE Discussion Thread
The following is in response to a post in the Software section, but the discussion is entirely about the film; so I'm putting these comments here:
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Originally Posted by Bruce Morrison
I thought Michelle Monaghan's role was pointless. Her character does almost nothing during most of the film except providing a sidekick for the Casey Affleck character. She seemed to be there purely to articulate the other side of the final debate about what should happen to the child - but that was virtually a re-run of the same debate that Affleck's character had just had with the Morgan Freeman character. http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...ml#post3348098 |
I guess it depends on how narrowly utilitarian one defines a character's function. The film, like Lehane's fiction, is not just about plot mechanics, but it's also a portrait of a particular locale. Affleck (the director) makes it clear with the opening montage and Patrick's initial voiceover that the portraiture is as important as the plot.
Angie Gennaro is someone who grew up in the same place, knew the same people, went to the same school, etc. as Helene and Dottie, but she turned out different. (Dottie spots it instantly. "I see you're still conceited", she says to Angie the moment she enters the room.) It tells us something about the neighborhood when we see that it doesn't automatically produce Helenes and Dotties. It tells us something about Patrick when we see that Angie is the type of woman he's involved with. And it's part of the essential tragedy of the film that, because of this case, Angie and Patrick can no longer be together. Their relationship is one of the many things that, by the end of the film, are "gone baby gone". (See further discussion below.)
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Originally Posted by Bruce Morrison
And that whole middle section involving the missing boy and the paedophile seemed an unnecessary side-track from the main plot, purely to give Ed Harris an opportunity for a bit of bravura acting and to establish that his character had lied earlier in the film and was therefore a suspect. http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/...ml#post3348098 |
Again, I suppose it depends on how narrowly utilitarian one requires plot elements to be. To me, the Jimmy Pietro story is essential to the film, even if its importance isn't immediately obvious when you're first watching.
The Pietro kidnappers are precisely the sort of criminals that Capt. Doyle's unit was formed to track down. They're what Dets. Bressant and Poole have had to deal with for years, more often than not with the hideous outcome that Patrick encounters when he makes his way upstairs after Poole has been shot. (It was precisely for that reason that Angie didn't want to take Amy's case.) Showing the Pietro case is a way of explaining what could motivate two career detectives with (as far as we know) spotless records to engage in a series of criminal acts in the name of some "greater good" of child welfare. At some point, they'd just seen too many scenes like the one Patrick encounters.
(Yeah, I know, on one of the
Law and Orders, they would have had Bressant tell his drug dealer story, and one of the bright detectives would have figured it out a few minutes later. Doink, doink; cut to commercial. But that's the difference between nuanced storytelling and formula TV.)
Or take the Pietro story from another angle: This is what Bressant and Poole
should have been doing: going after genuine criminals like these, instead of appointing themselves social workers at large, answerable to no one and covering their activities with murder and fraud. While they schemed to get their boss a replacement daughter, people like Jimmy Pietro's kidnappers went on their merry way. And remember: Bressant and Poole knew those people were out there, probably on the hunt. It's one of the first things they tell Patrick and Angie.
And this brings us back to Michelle Monaghan's Angie: I agree that she makes the same "journey" as the detectives (not Morgan Freeman's captain, who's a separate case because of his personal loss), but she does it within the span of the film. And she's smart enough to know that that's exactly what will happen if they take on a child abduction case -- that she'll lose her objectivity, that she'll be changed in some unexpected way, which is why she begs Patrick not to take the case at the outset. When Angie argues with Patrick at the end of the film, it's not a "re-run" of the argument with Capt. Floyd, nor could it be. Floyd was, and always has been, Patrick's adversary. Angie is his partner, his ally and his lover. That makes it a whole different conversation, and now if Patrick wants to do what he thinks is right, it's going to cost him something personal. And it does.
M.
