Slowly, the closed door hiding perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse away from prying eyes is creaking open. In 2017, the #MeToo movement empowered women (and men) across the world to speak out against their abusers. In 2024, the man versus bear dialogue ignited intense debate in nearly every corner of the Internet. These viral moments – among countless others – gave voice to the silent social compact so many women are raised to understand: Love and violence rarely exist on opposite sides of the continuum.
It’s an emerging dialogue, spurred on by new media challenging the shame and silence that bloom in the wake of intimate violence. Trace those threads of conversation back a decade: Before posting #MeToo or choosing the bear, there was your stance on David Finch’s 2014 Gone Girl.
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Following Nick (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) through the (literal) saccharine origins of their picturesque relationship, the film retraces the slow death of their marriage to reveal the danger we open ourselves up to when entering such fraught compacts.
The story of Nick and Amy unfurls gradually. Scenes of the present – as Nick comes to grips with Amy’s disappearance and his growing complicity in it – entwine with scenes of the past, each narrated by an entry from Amy’s diary. In this way, viewers are introduced to a carefree young couple that promises never to be like “every other couple [they] know.” Simultaneously, it juxtaposes this naïve promise with an older version of Nick and Amy, a couple that has become just that: unhappy, at odds, and violently so.
Here, Amy is the film’s authoress. Her entries peel back layers of escalation, evolving from love and respect to the disrespect and depersonalization that culminate in physical abuse. For many, hers is a familiar, well-trod path.
That’s precisely how it’s meant to feel. Just over an hour into the film, this expected arc grinds to a halt: What happens is not the graduation from spousal abuse to murder – it’s the graduation from prey to predator.
From her nondescript getaway car, Amy smugly confesses the truth: All of it, from those early, perfect stories to the later, gripping admissions of a relationship gone wrong, is history rewritten. Her diary was no archival endeavor; it is instead a modern retelling, vengefully recorded in response to her husband’s affair.
This diary has one purpose: To create a believable record that lures observers into making assumptions, drawing conclusions, and framing Nick for Amy’s death. These diary entries are torn directly from the pages of Flynn’s novel, yet they are all the more impactful for the intimacy and immediacy that emerges through the act of viewing.
Watching Amy’s gradual reduction introduces a certain air of voyeuristic complicity. Viewers become culpable in her degradation simply because they have stepped behind closed doors to bear witness. It’s precisely because they have borne witness – seeing events unfold before their eyes – that doubt never truly enters the picture. Guilt and presumption: The film introduces these two powerful forces, each of which draws further into question the line between story and reality.
A veil of uncertainty falls over events. Pieces of Amy’s story – Nick’s resentment and distance, the fraying threads that once bound them together – have been substantiated elsewhere. Others have not. The viewer, then, must decide where fiction meets fact.
So while Nick and Amy’s is a shared annihilation, each complicit in their own (if unequal) ways, it is far easier to forgive Amy and accept her story, which feels too raw to dismiss entirely. The reason for this blind faith is disturbingly simple: Amy’s story is ubiquitous. Her words, spat out in the throes of a recognizable rage, resonate:
“Nick Dunne took my pride and my dignity and my hope and my money. He took and took from me until I no longer existed. That’s murder. Let the punishment fit the crime.”
Perhaps Amy’s diary is manufactured, written in the vengeful script of a woman scorned for the final time. Perhaps her words are not to be trusted. What is true, however, is the core of her grievance: Her marriage was a death by a thousand cuts.
It is this gradual diminishment so many women fear. Marital rape, financial abuse, weaponized incompetence, and unbalanced mental loads – what is a mauling in the face of such utter destruction?
Gone Girl answers this question with another: Why not return the favor?
Amy Dunne is no lamb to the slaughter. Neither man nor bear, she is a third predator in the woods, complete with a set of claws and an oh-so-pretty head full of cunning plans to see justice served. While her actions are amplified for theatrical effect, they nonetheless illustrate that one needn’t always bow to the blade.
This air of righteousness makes Amy unbelievably difficult to condemn, no more so than in the case of her long-time stalker, Desi Collings (Neal Patrick Harris), whom she turns to when her carefully laid plans falter.
Yet, Desi offers only a brief respite. From his luxurious, remote home, he half-heartedly hides his intentions beneath a veil of faked concern – a mask that falls away the instant he tells her: “I won’t force myself on you.” The subsequent threat, “unless you make me,” echoes between them, unspoken.
With Desi, Amy dons her truest form: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, well-versed in the art of expectation. Chameleon-like, the predator lurks just beneath the surface of her lacy blue nightgown, freshly waxed legs, and “cool girl” façade donned to distract and disorient.
Amy’s ability to switch on the version of herself Desi desires may seem more like a defence mechanism than an instrument of violence. Yet, it is ultimately effective, leading him to meet his fate where he least expects it: at the hands of the woman he thought he caged.
Gone Girl does not ask viewers whether Amy is right or wrong. Instead, it asks them to consider why she behaves the way she does, and how she is so deft at doing so. Violence, it tells us, is synonymous with love. The annihilation of self, replaced by a version of “cool girl” tailor-made to suit the male gaze, is a party trick learned at a young age. But “cool girl” doesn’t need to be a cage. For Amy, it is a weapon to be wielded at will – a tool of past victimization reshaped into the key to freedom.
As Gone Girl turns ten, know this: Seeing Amy as vindicated is different from condoning her actions. In fact, they are two entirely different conversations. Amy may very well be a psychopath, but she is also a symbol in an ongoing conversation about female agency and the way it is stifled and extinguished in relationships with men. She’s a perverse comfort, confirming that while gendered violence is still to be expected, one need no longer see oneself as prey and prey alone.
