Gone Baby Gone: Bad Mother! No Kid for You!

This review was originally published on cinekklesia on February 28, 2008.

A friend at work recently castigated me for noting how different the career trajectories have been for Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, even though they both made their (early) claims to fame with Good Will Hunting. According to my friend, Matt has no special talents of note, so any denigration of Ben is simply unwarranted. I'll grant that Matt Damon is not a great actor—decent but nothing to write home about—but doesn't he have a little more to brag about than his cinematic colleague? After all, Matt didn't get involved in projects like Reindeer Games and Gigli. (I admit that I haven't seen either one — but do I need to?)

Thus, I was mildly hesitant to rent Gone Baby Gone (2007), Affleck's directorial debut. However, Netflix's algorithm assured me that based on my ratings of other films, I would enjoy this thriller, and the algorithm (again) proved correct. Like any good crime drama that goes beyond the salacious, Gone Baby Gone works on different levels: one can enjoy it as a simple kidnapping tale with unexpected twists and turns, or one can appreciate the moral quandary of its main character, who must contend with the question of who is "good enough" to care for their own children. At any level, Gone Baby Gone serves as a hopeful sign that Mr. Affleck's career has some promising days ahead.

In our movie, the director's brother, Casey, plays Patrick Kenzie, a Boston-based private investigator who specializes in hunting down debt-ridden deadbeats. He and his girlfriend/investigative partner, Angie (Michelle Monaghan), are commissioned to conduct a supplemental investigation into the kidnapping of Amanda McCready (Madeline O'Brien) — something for which they have no prior experience. I say "supplemental" because the police are already conducting their own investigation, but Amanda's aunt, Bea (Amy Madigan), wants the PIs to rummage through Boston's underworld—those who would have nothing to do with the cops (at least voluntarily)—in order to dig for more information. Patrick soon finds himself a wee bit over his head, as his snooping turns up inconvenient facts that make this simple kidnapping case anything but.

You'll notice that I mentioned the victim's aunt as the one who sought out the private investigators. You see, the girl's mother, Helene (Amy Ryan, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance), isn't quite up to snuff. She likes to drink. She likes to carouse. She's a barfly with a foul mouth. She's also known in the neighborhood as the powder-cocaine equivalent of the proverbial "crack whore." She also happens to be Amanda's legal guardian.

Besides fear of the terrible things that potentially await Amanda, the audience is invited to feel disgust at Helene. Right at the beginning, we question her maternal fitness when we see Amanda's room: bare, dreary, and not particularly well lit (Patrick jokingly questions whether the assailants took off with the furniture, as well). Throughout the course of Gone Baby Gone, we learn more of Helene's regular interactions with Boston's seedier elements and realize that Amanda's pre-kidnapping environment was, to put it nicely, not particularly healthy.

Thus, our movie cleverly presents us with an inverse relationship: as its mysteries slowly untangle and become more clear, the moral conundrums become thornier. Specifically: Who has the rightful claim to parenthood? By default, we privilege biological parents, which intuitively makes sense. However, we also have come to take claims of child abuse and neglect very seriously, and Americans are well aware of cases in which the state wrests a child from a bad home for his/her "own good." (The recent drama surrounding Britney Spears' parenting—or lack thereof—is perhaps the most famous example.)

Yet, even as the characters confront the question of parental rights, Gone Baby Gone presents us with a relatively simple characterization of Helene, one that makes it easy for audience members to judge her as horribly deficient. However, that characterization masks an underlying ambiguity. After all, one's fitness for parenting is an ultimately arbitrary question. Where does one draw the line between the acceptable and unacceptable caregiver? As the totalitarian reach of the nanny state grows, this question becomes more important since there is no logical limit to the criteria that governments can establish for "proper" parenting. If a father lets his child drink two liters of Coke a day, should the local DSS raid his house? How about a mother who is a member of Ku Klux Klan and who teaches racist ideology at home? Is she, in some way, a danger to her children?

On a related vein, the question of whether biology should take primacy is also arbitrary. As mentioned, we tend to privilege biological parents, but as we see with Helene, nature is no guarantee of good nurture. It is disconcerting that we make the process of adoption so onerous—even for parents who have the means and the desire to raise a child—while implicitly assuming that those who have a kid the old-fashioned way are "ready" for parenthood. When one hears of cases of biological parenting gone awry, one can't help but wonder whether our obsession with genetic primacy is actually harmful for children.

While family-related issues are thorny, it is interesting how most of the characters in Gone Baby Gone easily make up their minds in the case of Helene and move on with their lives. It is the lead character, Patrick Kenzie, who evinces an inner struggle, unsatisfied with the options before him but nevertheless compelled to make a moral decision (or at least to choose the lesser evil). Because Patrick cares so deeply about this case, he ultimately becomes undone by it, proving the cynical wisdom of Clare Boothe Luce's famous quotation: "No good deed goes unpunished."

So it appears that a talented artist resides in Ben Affleck after all. In Gone Baby Gone, he has crafted an engaging crime thriller with the requisite lowlifes, crooked cops, and downbeat ambience — along with some probing moral questions. Here's hoping that Mr. Affleck continues to produce fine films in his post-J. Lo phase.