Editor’s Note: The Girl on the Train opens in wide theatrical release today, October 7, 2016.
If Tate Taylor’s (Get On Up, The Help, Winter’s Bone) adaptation of Paula Hawkins’ 2015 bestselling novel, The Girl on the Train, is any indication (it’s not, but let’s pretend it is), the patriarchy – white, male, entitled – is alive and well in suburbia. On the outside looking in -– like the protagonist, Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt), who rides a train every day to and from work in Manhattan (she doesn’t, but more, anon) -– there are upper class social, cultural, and economic markers, the big, comfortable, two-floor homes, the carefully manicured lawns, and for the men anyway, beautiful, trophy-level wives. For the women, however, it’s constricting, oppressive, and repressive. The women are either wives and mothers or nothing at all. For Rachel, the inability to conceive and become a mother led to the end of her marriage to Tom (Justin Theroux), the loss of her job (something vague in public relations), and a rapid descent into alcoholism.
Despite Blunt’s considerable acting talent, Rachel never makes for a convincing alcoholic. Rachel’s alcoholism is more plot device than believable character trait, especially after logic-stretching, late-film revelations undermine everything we know or think we know.
As readers of Hawkins’ novel will attest, there’s more to Rachel’s self-abnegating alcoholism than her inability to conceive, but to reveal more would be to venture into spoiler territory. Those reasons, however, involve suppressed, possibly false, memories, her obsessive, stalker-level behavior toward Tom and his second wife, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), Rachel and Tom’s former realtor. Anna literally replaced Rachel in the life they planned for themselves. It’s more than enough to drive anyone to drink. For Rachel, drinking doesn’t stop her from taking the train to and from New York every day, in part so she can play-act at normality, in part so she can watch a seemingly “perfect couple,” Megan (Haley Bennett) and Scott Hipwell (Luke Evans), as they engage in semi-private acts of affection.
On the surface, they have the life Rachel desperately wants or thinks she wants. When, however, she spots Megan with another man, Dr. Kamal Abdic (Édgar Ramírez), she feels a profound sense of betrayal and loss. It’s all or mostly in her head, but Megan’s mysterious disappearance, not to mention an alcohol-induced blackout leaves four or five hours missing from Rachel’s memory, she begins to suspect she’s involved somehow. At minimum, Rachel believes she knows something that could help solve Megan’s disappearance. She’s not alone. A detective, Riley (Allison Janney), shares Rachel’s suspicion about her involvement. Compelled by various obsessions, Rachel turns detective herself, insinuating herself in Scott’s life as Megan’s friend, seeing Dr. Abdic as a new patient, and otherwise trying to find the answers on her own.
On the outside looking in –- like the protagonist, Rachel Watson (Emily Watson), who rides a train every day to and from work in Manhattan -– there are upper class social, cultural, and economic markers, the big, comfortable, two-floor homes, the carefully manicured lawns, and for the men anyway, beautiful, trophy-level wives. For the women, however, it’s constricting, oppressive, and repressive.
The Girl on a Train shares the novel’s multiple points of view, shifting from Rachel (who quickly slides into primary protagonist mode), Megan (across several months), and Anna (less because of Anna’s narrative importance and more to follow the spirit and intent of the source material), but to diminishing results. Despite Blunt’s considerable acting talent, Rachel never makes for a convincing alcoholic. Rachel’s alcoholism is more plot device than believable character trait, especially after logic-stretching, late-film revelations undermine everything we know or think we know. It’s narrative sleight-of-hand that works as shock, pulp value, reinforcing the idea that women are mere props in the lives of the men who dictate patriarchal rules through violence, coercion, and intimidation. Thematically, it might be airtight (most men are monsters at worst, users and abusers at best), but that doesn’t stop the late-film revelations from feeling like they’re borderline ridiculous, ludicrous, or nonsensical, because they are.
In Tate Taylor's The Girl on a Train, despite Emily Blunt’s considerable acting talent, Rachel never makes for a convincing alcoholic, her alcoholism mere plot device, especially after logic-stretching, late-film revelations undermine everything already established in the film, providing some shock or pulp value, but little else.
