I already said that the little one Madeleine looked like a fictional script. The story that Ben Affleck tells in ‘Bye, baby, bye’his directorial debut, begins with the kidnapping of a girl very similar in appearance and age to the daughter of the McCanns (in the photo on the right), and who is also called Madeline O’Brien (in the photo on the left). It is not surprising that the event made him think about whether its premiere was opportune and that he finally decided to delay it in the United Kingdom, although it will arrive here on Wednesday, the 31st. So, far from the act of opportunism that might seem, the coincidence can harm to the creators of the film.
But even more than this gruesome story, ‘Gone Baby Gone’ it reminded me during his viewing of ‘Mystic River’ And I didn’t know that it was based on a novel by the same author, Dennis Lehane. Now everything makes sense.
The oldest of the Afflecks shows that being on the other side of the camera has not been a whim of a star, but that it is worth it. His work is resolved with a enormous solvency and both the generic aspect of the film, which concerns the making and production design, as well as the direction of the actors are undertaken with elegance and skill.
The story told is somewhat conventional and, despite this, Affleck knows how to give it points of originality. He gets the best of it when he nears the end of the tape. Towards the middle part, there are sections in which it becomes somewhat long and in which one could come to think that there are several sequences that are left over, however, in the denouement, it is verified that everything was necessary. The structure is slightly strange, with several false endings and with somewhat dead moments. and yet, it is this feeling that the author is wandering, lost in the story he wants to tell and not knowing how to move forward, the one that makes surprises work for her and we swallow them. If everything had been constructed more correctly, we would have immediately suspected the true solution of the mystery. Has the flute sounded or did you have it all figured out? I don’t know, the fact is that it turned out well.
As I was saying, the actors are one of the most powerful elements of the filmEspecially Ed Harris. But it is so impressive that I do not know if it is exaggerated. His yelling and rages walk a fine line between award-winning acting and overacting.. Casey Affleck, precisely because he has the face of not having broken a plate, achieves a very interesting character, who always maintains the ability to surprise, but without being implausible. Morgan Freeman only appears in two moments and he is not the one who contributes the most to the film, but since he has to be in everything, well here we have him. Amy Ryan, in the role of the mother of the missing person, is magnificent. On the negative side, she would cite MIchelle Monaghan, but not because she acts badly, but because they have given her a demolition character, who doesn’t paint anything, she barely speaks except to provoke matrimonial anger and hinder her partner.
And regarding the possible exaggeration of the actors’ performance, I would make the following comment: during that middle part of the film that I mentioned before, the scenes become somewhat repetitive with each other, not because they tell the same thing, but because they are all very long conversations in which the characters brag, threaten, swear, or sarcastic and ___y phrases. This is very well done, both the script and the direction, that is to say: these dialogues are very well written, the tempo in their translation on the screen is very good, the tension has been able to be reproduced and the actors are credible. But it seems that Ben Affleck has seen that they turn out so well that he has abused this type of sequences and, in addition to the fact that he does them too many times, he puts them all in a row. Or maybe it’s that the actors have wanted to have their moments of brilliance and the director has not dared to eliminate them so that no one would feel offended. And if that’s what it is, then it could offend me, because telling a story or making a film should never be subject to the fact that its interpreters are happy, rather it is the actors who should be at the service of what is narrates.
In addition to this possible reason, the excess of these dialogues is perceived as a attempt to emphasize the drama and dilemma that the protagonist goes through so that the viewer does not have any doubts about the conflict presented. It falls short of being crude and obvious, but it does come close to treating as stupid an audience that has probably already reached that conclusion without much reminder.
As an unimportant comment, I would say that the issue of pedophilia is already widely seen in recent cinema, as I had observed in some other review. In this film (SPOILER) is introduced to mislead, like many other elements of it. Since in the end it will have nothing to do with it (END OF SPOILER), we could have dispensed with it since it is clear that it has only been included with the desire to raise sensationalism or because Lehane is so obsessed with it that he has turned it into a constant in his works.
In short, ‘Goodbye, little girl, goodbye’ is a film that can be reminiscent of ‘Mystic River’ because of the rural environment in which it unfolds, because of the style of its characters and because the theme is related to children, but which, without being not at all a bad movie lags behind Clint Eastwood’s. ‘Gone Baby Gone’ is full of great moments very well executed and with a surprise ending. The drawbacks that can be sought are in the minority with respect to the virtues that it presents and for this reason, despite not being a masterpiece, we can conclude that it is not bad for a debut. A excellent cover letter for a director who is just starting out, it could make us think that in future works, the defects found here might be eliminated and that he could soon shoot interesting films. Maybe Ben Affleck should stay on that side of the camera.
