Under the Spotlight: Rosamund Pike’s stunning performance as Amy Dunne in ‘Gone Girl’
Since the 1990s, David Fincher has established a reputation as one of contemporary cinema’s most skilled psychological thriller directors. From Se7en to Fight Club, Fincher balances high-octane action and shock with developed character studies for gripping viewing. In 2014, he teamed up with Gillian Flynn to adapt her 2012 novel Gone Girl for the big screen. With Flynn in charge of the screenplay, the book’s central character, Amy Dunne, was brought to life with the help of actor Rosamund Pike, who gave the most outstanding performance of her career as the unhinged villain.
Gone Girl remains one of Fincher’s most significant accomplishments, demonstrating his skill for mixing thrilling action with precise and intricately defined characters. Amy Dunne is one of the most complex and compelling figures to grace our screens in recent years, and Fincher and Flynn’s studied exploration of evil is truly masterful. The film explores the extensive revenge plot carried out by Amy, who, after discovering her husband Nick’s infidelity, plans to kill herself and frame him for murder. Throughout the film, we witness Amy’s increasingly deranged behaviour as she does whatever it takes, including harming herself and manipulating everyone around her in order to frame herself as the victim of her husband’s wicked ways.
Despite the horrifying actions that Amy engages in, Pike imbues her performance with such cunning hypnotism that she manages to charm the audience into siding with her crimes. Since the release of the film, many female viewers have memorised Amy’s ‘Cool Girl’ monologue, which, despite coming from the mouth of a psychopath, rings incredibly true. Regardless of her conniving ways, Amy is an extreme example of a woman fed up with performing, fighting to survive in a patriarchal world that has worn her down to nothing. In that respect, many women have found a twisted sense of sympathy with Amy, propelled by Pike’s mesmerising performance.
Amy explains in the monologue: “Cool girl. Men always use that, don’t they? As their defining compliment. She’s a Cool girl. Cool girl is hot. Cool girl is game. Cool girl is fun. Cool girl never gets angry at her man. She only smiles in a chagrin, loving manner and then presents her mouth for fucking. She like what he likes.” Coldly and calmly, Pike delivers a relatable rant about the unrealistic expectations forced upon women in every sphere, even romance, which is meant to be a blissful, natural experience.
She continues: “We were happy pretending to be other people. We were the happiest people we knew. And what’s the point of being together if you’re not the happiest? But Nick got lazy. He became someone I did not agree to marry. He actually expected me to love him unconditionally, then he dragged me, penniless, to the naval of this great country and found himself a newer, younger, bouncier Cool Girl. You think I’d let him destroy me and end up happier than ever? No fucking way. He doesn’t get to win!”
In the second half of the monologue, Amy explores the pressures of female ageing in a society that privileges youth and associates it with idealism and beauty. Amy epitomises many of the fears that women harness and the repressed rage that comes with years of being ground down by male chauvinism and sexism. She gives everything to a man who throws her efforts back in her face, ditching her for someone else that he will eventually treat in the same manner. The humiliation of trying hard for someone else, of losing oneself to the demands of patriarchy, all culminate in Amy’s extreme behaviour.
Pike portrays Amy’s fragmented personality extraordinarily well, slowly deteriorating throughout the film with physical transformations that demonstrate her loss of sanity. At the film’s beginning, Amy is a vision of perfect beauty and privilege. She appears to have it all – an attractive husband, stunning looks, charisma, and wealth. Pike perfects a smile that hides Amy’s deep-rooted insecurities – no one would know that underneath the surface, she’s slowly cracking and reaching breaking point.
Amy appears to have been forced to perform as someone she is not since childhood. As the inspiration behind her mother’s Amazing Amy book series, she has lived in the shadow of a character representing an idealised version of herself. Amy carries these insecurities into adulthood, culminating in selfish behaviour and tragedy. Pike explained to Collider, “She’s not only the subject, but it’s like she’s been given a fictional twin who’s better than her, more accomplished than her, more popular than her, and more loved than her, by her own parents. That’s a recipe for narcissism, right there, because you’re entitled and you feel inadequate. Then, that makes a very insecure adult who simultaneously has very high expectations of themselves and others. That, for me, was my in into the character.”
Pike gives an incredible performance as Amy Dunne, managing to portray her cold, plotting psychopath with complexity and emotion. We feel for her despite her heinous actions, leaving the audience in a complicated moral dilemma. Is it OK to root for Amy in spite of her actions? Fincher leaves us questioning everything by the end of Gone Girl, which finishes with a shot mirroring the one that opened the movie, only this time, Pike subtly shifts her face into an unforgettable Kubrick stare-esque symbol of control and satisfaction.
