Macbeth in another form

Rating: 6/10 (3 April 2016)

I had been watching Orson Welles' film of Macbeth and I couldn't help but notice that there were some psychological similarities between that film and Gone Girl.
In Macbeth, Macbeth was motivated by his wife, Lady Macbeth, to improve his position in life, and he liked her for it. In Gone Girl the husband Nick Dunne, for all of his wife's psychotic faults, also gradually realizes that his life has benefits because he is with her, because of who they are together. Though they do not at first realize this. She, Amy Dunne, gives the very interesting "cool girl" speech about halfway through the film of how she had failed in trying to live up to what she thought was her husbands image of the perfect partner, which her husband Nick later echoes about himself in his one successful media interview. In their marriage, each had been trying to be that "cool girl" to the other. For many people, trying to live up to the right kind of ideal may in fact help them to become better people. But not so the Macbeths, nor the Dunnes. People die, former victims suffer injustices, all the while he and his wife gradually ascend to become the king and queen of the media.
One of the things that makes the Shakespearean plays so satisfying is the sense of justice resolved. That doesn't really happen in this film which is why I have only given it six stars out of ten. The film feels incomplete, and it would have been interesting to see their arrest, or at least a gradual unraveling under the wight of conscience--again harking back to the first couple Macbeth.
The psychological aspects of the story were good, the actors were great I have to say. However, as other reviewers have noted there are many inconsistencies in the police investigation. For example, apart from those previously mentioned, why wasn't the diary and ink tested for its actual age, and the security footage at the lake house of her supposed kidnapper would surely have had a number of discrepancies, particularly her relaxed arrival. For a film that relies on that sense of realistic grittiness, there are far too many unfortunate oversights.