Interesting

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2016)

The movie and real life:The movie is about marriage. It takes the problems that most marriages face such as 'trying to change each other, resent each other and only cause more pain' and applies them to a couple that is extraordinary trying to pass them as acceptable and present even then, trying to pass them as 'normal'.
Amy Dunne is exceptional. Extremely smart as smart as to get Harvard and Yale degrees and make up crime scenes and achieve to pass them as believable. She is a perfectionist. She looked for a perfect husband and when she realised that perfect does not exist (at least in her partner) she tried to change him. This was too much for Nick Dunne and it drove him away. He cheated, broke Amy's heart and triggered her craziness. She was in love. And one might say when you are in love you are bound to do crazy things, jealousy makes you irrational.Amy however went too far. She planned Nicks penalty death and killed Desi Collings. Even for a crazy person in love there must be a line and not everything (as killings) is justified with 'I did it for love'.
While Nick Dunne might appear as the rational victim he is not all well either. His desire to be with Amy even after he know everything she had done and even killed does not speak well for him. It makes you believe that maybe what Amy said is true. That maybe he liked himself best when he tried to become the perfect person that a perfectionist as Amy would like. Is that love? Absolutely not. That's a self-love triggered from outside. Dependence on someone else liking you so that you can love yourself. A weak character. But love? No.
Was Amy in love? Not really. She was in love with perfectionism. As soon as she had hope that Nick was not a lost case and that she still can turn him into the perfect husband she wanted (when she saw him on TV) she went back. She went back to work on her perfect life. To work on making her husband fit into that. So actually, unconditional, real love is no where to be seen. Begs the question, is that real life? Is unconditional and real love non existent? Is that real marriage but in a slightly less crazy notch? I don't know.
The scenario of the couple's life in Amy's diary has no resemblance with real life. Why would someone that has a wife that is actually as cool as Amy (not nagging, understandable, we are the most important thing everything else is background noise) not be happy with her and cheat on her. It's irrational. So if the couple from diary was real they would actually be happy and the husband would not cheat (usually the husband cheats when he feels emotionally not good in a relationship). But that couple was't real and I happy that I could tell that something is wrong with Amy's story and we haven't heard Nick's side yet.
So overall real life message would probably be: don't be someone you are not and don't try to change people (cliche right?). But as it can be seen from this movie as well it only leads to unhappiness and sooner our latter you are exposed.
As for the production: acting is good (Rosamund Pike much better than Ben Affleck tho). The movie is long but interesting so it makes the time go fast. A very good development of characters can be seen. The character are very real life like.
So overall I would recommend this movie to anyone who has 2 and half hours. It is interesting and makes you think about marriage.