False drama

While we might give a meaning to Mickey's death a fortiori (undeservedly so, I believe). I'm convince that a good knowledge of storytelling and its techniques reveals that Mickey's death is a case of false drama (death ex machina) resulting from the fact that the writer had no idea how to finish the story.

Many elements found within the story favorize this conclusion:

1. The completely mechanical, forced, arbitrary nature in which Mickey dies.
2. Nothing follows this event, making it the fulcrum point of the story yet never been set-up properly through theme or plot during the whole story. This shows that it was used as a way to end the story in a dramatic fashion. In other words, it's a arbitrary plot tool used by the writer. Good writing comes from character, not from thin air.
3. The rather superfluous nature of Mickey's character in the story make his death even more secondary and superflous.
4. The fact that, all things taken into account, the plot of the film is very thin, resulting in a lack of opposition, therefore, the film could not conclude with a confrontation between the different opponents. The real and deserved ending of the film (the one that's been set up from page 1) would have been a confrontation between Ben and his wife. Unfortunately, the writer made a mistake in creating the wife character. Since she really did not insist on her husband's affaire, she was devoided of her ability to create drama with the main character, Ben. Instead of this final confrontation, we mostly get scenes of total strangers having relationship for the first time. This serves the setting of the story allright, but it carries with it the great burden of not allowing the most important characters of the story to come into conflict with each other about the things that truly matters in this story. In many ways, the whole adultery thing kills the drama because it splits all the characters in opposite direction. Yet, drama works in a radically opposite fashion. In order to get conflict you want to bring all of your character together so that they can fight about the deep issues that are ruining their lives. You may argue that the writer tries to make the dissolution of the families and of society a theme of the story, but it really comes across as a repetitive, unspecific and rather useless. Even if it did get the theme across, I believe that the lack of plot didn't justify the film's existence on this merit. Fortunately for the director, he can get away with it since he's got a great casting, actors direction and mood working for him.

Well...Since the film lacked in the plot department, the writer needed to give the story a final dramatic beat to leave the audience with a sense of satisfaction and closure. This shows that trying to break the rules of good writing or simply ignoring them is a price you have to pay. And, believe me, you dont want to pay it at the end when it's never been properly set.