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Mike Griffen

Prof. Dunne

ENG 401

4 April, 2015

Working-Class Boston in Gone Baby Gone

Class, in the socio-economic sense, has been one of the most important lines of

demarcation in human culture and the primary determinate of social status dating back to

the dawn of civilization. Tensions and general disconnect between those occupying

opposite ends of the societal ladder is an inevitable reality of the class system. From the

patricians and plebeians of the Roman Republic to the bourgeoisie and proletariat of

Marxist Europe, conflict between social classes has proven to be an inherent part of human

society. In recent years the disconnect between working-class and non-working-class

members in modern America has been demonstrated in many facets of modern life. Since

the turn of the millennium the film industry has experienced an increased desire to

examine the struggles and lifestyle of working-class Americans, particularly in one of the

country’s conspicuously working-class cites: Boston, Massachusetts. The movie Gone Baby

Gone, starring Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and directed by Ben Affleck, offers a penetratingly

realistic illustration of the pragmatism and gritty resolve of the city and its blue-collar

neighborhoods.

Gone Baby Gone is an adaptation of a novel by best-selling author Dennis Lehane.

Lehane, a native of Dorchester, where both the film and book are set, is renowned for the

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stark realism of his characters and his portrayal of inner-city Boston. With Lehane’s

assistance, Ben Affleck hits the mark in his directorial debut, adapting the story to film

while managing to retain the grittiness Lehane’s books are known for. The film allow us a

glimpse of the reality of working-class struggles and serves to remind us that these type of

things and these types of people really exist. The credibility of the movie is legitimized by

the involvement of its Bostonian director, as well as a number of producers, actors, and

screenwriters who were shaped by the backgrounds and neighborhoods shown in the film.

Ben Affleck grew up in the Boston area alongside his brother, Casey who plays the

protagonist. The contributions of first-hand witnesses of this environment gives credence

to their representations help give us a taste of some of the truth that dwells just outside our

little bubbles and we often find it as unpleasant as the characters themselves.

The 2007 neo-noir film Gone Baby Gone focuses on Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck), a

private investigator operating out of a working-class neighborhood in Dorchester, and the

efforts of he and his partner, to find a local five year-old named Amanda McCready, who

has been abducted from her bedroom without a trace. The film was shot in Dorchester

itself and used local non-actors living in the neighborhood in supporting roles, adding a

bleak authenticity rarely seen in Hollywood productions.

The opening scene is beautifully powerful. The first twenty-five seconds or so are

silent. We are presented with a view of tightly-packed three family apartment units. A man

sits outside on his stoop smoking a cigarette, his hands hardened, callused, and grimy from

long days of hard labor, while a woman in a belly shirt stands behind him, blankly gazing

into the distance. The silence is broken by Kenzie’s voice. Images of the neighborhood and

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its people continue to appear on screen; men on their porches sipping beers, street art on

the corner near a bus-stop, kids hanging out on the streets, a rundown building serving as a

church. Real people, living their everyday life. Kenzie’s monologue meshes flawlessly with

the visuals:

“I always believed it was the things you don't choose that makes you who you are. Your city, your neighborhood, your family. People here take pride in these things, like it was something they'd accomplished. The bodies around their souls, the cities wrapped around those. I lived on this block my whole life; most of these people have. When your job is to find people who are missing, it helps to know where they started. I find the people who started in the cracks and then fell through."

He is deeply proud of his neighborhood, proud that it has made him who he is, as are

most people on his block. Despite the disadvantages the inhabitants of his neighborhood

have been saddled with, he wouldn’t have it any other way. Neither would they. Their pride

for their home contrasts with the movie’s representation of many of the working-class

people as aggressive, violent, chest-beating men and angst ridden, apathetic women, people

whose only attainable victory is escape from the neighborhoods they love so much.

Hypermasculinity is an underlying theme among the men in this film. So much of the

discourse and relations between characters involves firearms, intimidation, threats, or

actual violence. Granted, Kenzie’s job forces him into Boston’s criminal underworld, where

such behavior is imperative to get respect, but even his exchanges with police detectives

and one of his employers follow similar lines. Violence and masculinity are displayed as the

language of the young working-class male.

There is a scene early in the film in which Patrick and his partner/girlfriend Angela

Gennaro (Melissa Monaghan) enter a bar to try to obtain information. It is mid-afternoon

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and the patrons, an aggressive, rowdy group of low-lifes, try to lock Kenzie and Angela in,

presumably with the intention of raping Angela. Kenzie pulls his gun and only then do the

patrons back off. Words don’t work, even punching one of the men fails to deter them, but

Patrick’s gun finally does the job and they are let out.

Amy Ryan brilliantly plays the missing girl’s mother, Helene, a lethargic, drug-using,

“welfare queen” – an amalgamation of all the qualities which haunt the nightmares of

Reaganites everywhere. The night her daughter was abducted, she left her home alone,

door unlocked, while she blew lines and had sex at a local dive bar. She panders to the

cameras and news crews, affecting the aura of a devastated and frightened mother. Not

trusting the police to produce any results in the search for Amanda, and realizing the

Helene was useless, the girl’s aunt and uncle hire Kenzie. Later, while Patrick and Angela

attempted to question her about Amanda, Helene tells them that they’re blocking the TV.

She revels in her television appearance, seeming to care less about finding her daughter

than her fifteen seconds of fame on the local news.

While Helene may come off as an overblown caricature of a recidivist working-class

mother, her character is not at all farfetched. Although so-called “welfare mothers” are far

less common than many politicians would like us to believe, they do exist. Helene’s

character embodies everything that is wrong with inner-city working class life, the side of

Patrick’s neighborhood most people choose to gloss over. Her general lethargy and

inability to put the needs of her daughter before her own pathetic agenda is revealed to be

the primary conflict of the story.

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At the core of the film is a moral dilemma, one which forces Kenzie and Gennaro to

confront the reality underlying the pride in their home which has been engrained in them

since their youth. The truth is that their neighborhood is not the best place for a child to

grow up, a sentiment which is further accentuated by Helene’s poor maternal skills and off-

kilter moral compass. As the film pushes toward its climax, we find that Amanda’s uncle

and Helene’s brother, Lionel, had been observing Helene’s incompetence and neglect

toward her daughter. His tolerance reached a tipping point when Helene left the girl in her

car for over four hours on a 90-degree day and Amanda roasted as a result. He contacted

Remy Broussard (Ed Harris), an agent for the Crimes Against Children (CAC) division of

Boston Police Department, who told Lionel he could help get Amanda away from Helene for

good and give her a nice home and a good life. Lionel quietly kidnapped Amanda and gave

her to Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman), Captain of the CAC and a man who had seen his own

daughter kidnapped and murdered.

For the duration of the film, Doyle and his wife gave Amanda a good life and all of

their love at their own home. At the end of the film, Kenzie drives to the Doyle’s home in the

suburbs and discovers Amanda, happy and comfortable in her new life. Kenzie is presented

with a difficult, heart wrenching moral dilemma: keep quiet and let the little girl stay at

with a family who loves her and cares about her, or do what he was hired to do and return

her to her home and a trajectory that is likely to be wrought with unhappiness. Kenzie

wrestles with the issue. He eventually chooses to turn the Doyles in and return Amanda,

despite Angela’s promise that she would leave him if he did.

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The film ends with Kenzie again in Helene’s apartment. A grateful Helene is

preparing to go on a date with some guy who saw her on the news. She tells Kenzie that she

hasn’t even set up a babysitter and was planning to dump newly returned Amanda on a

neighbor. Patrick, clearly having some serious second thoughts about his decision, agrees

to babysit. It is obvious that nothing has changed.

Little Amanda is innocent, like sheep among wolves, entrapped since birth by a

world she neither chose nor understood. The bucolic suburban home of the Doyles and the

life it represents are ultimately snatched away from her, crushing her only hope of escape

from the working-class melancholy and conflict which she had so briefly escaped. In which

stemmed from his deep-seeded regard for the concept of community commitment and

integrity, Patrick simultaneously, forfeited his lover, defamed a highly respected police

officer who’d spent his whole career helping children, sent that man’s wife to jail, sent a

little girl’s uncle to jail, and sent the little girl back to a situation in which she was neglected

from one in which she was loved and cared for.

Boston’s history is deeply can trace its roots in the history if its working class. The

parochialism, pride, grittiness, and resiliency of its people have long been a defining

characteristic of the city. In Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck managed to capture the reality of

life in the working-class, its harsh realities and the character of its people. Although the

general prognosis on the life of the working-class people shown in the film is that it is less-

than-desirable, the film does show that the people there have accepted it and wear their

backgrounds as badges of honor. It manages to convey that places and people like this do

exist.