8 years after Gone Girl: revival of the female anti-hero

Nearly a decade after American director David Fincher’s Gone Girl graced movie theaters, the cinematic adaptation to the best-selling psychological thriller by Gillian Flynn has revolutionized the way women, “bad women” especially, were portrayed in the media.

Director Fincher is notorious for his dark, complex thrillers with a hint of complexity, and unexpected plot twists.

Released in 2014, Gone Girl explores a relationship between husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) and Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike), but things get complicated once the latter suddenly disappears, and clues start pointing that something bad might have happened to her. 

However, Gone Girl’s tour-de-force was bringing a strong, smart and problematic female lead to the heart of the narrative, and creating a non-binary portrayal of nuance that male characters are used to getting.

Women had their versions of the Joker and Tyler Durden in Amy, a character that is neither evil nor good, that has motivations that drive her, is acutely aware of her actions and is a master planner and manipulator.

Amy’s character made audiences swing from liking her, to understanding her, to fearing her, all while agreeing that there is no denying the genius of her modus operandi.

Amy is a perfectionist; she has a bit of Fincher in her. Her husband, Nick became the prime suspect in the case of her sudden disappearance, only to discover that she planned everything all along.

Gone Girl is a film that explores the female character’s narcissism and antisocial personality disorder, sociopathic tendencies, and follows the seemingly perfect staged crime that would eventually avenge her.

Amy’s character has multiple layers that Fincher peeled off as the movie went by. The whole film has a sadistic satirical take on marriage and the conflicts within a couple. Amy directed the viewers’ focus towards a certain direction, making the plot twist all the more satisfying and unconventional.

Women today are all too familiar with the “cool girl monologue,” an early scene in the movie’s second act that constitutes the unexpected plot twist and explores the heavy expectations put on women and that make them desirable to men.

Although Amy’s way was exaggerated, her motives resonated with many women, who hailed the character as the best female anti-hero in cinema’s recent history. Although not the first, Amy was the most extreme, which propelled her at the top of the most “crazy” women portrayed on the big screen.

But the movie is supposed to explore narcissism not in women particlarly, but within couples.  In an interview with Film Comment, Fincher said: “Most interesting to me was the idea of our collective narcissism as it relates to coupling, or whom we show to our would-be mates and whom they show to us.”

He doesn’t rely solely on the story and cinematography; he uses sound and film scores to emphasize the complexity of emotions displayed by his twisted characters.

In Gone Girl, the music was mostly slow and eerie, accompanying dark color schemes and the somberness of the story.

A character’s eyebrow movement in this movie translates into a slight camera tilt. 

This movie explores heavy feelings such as narcissism, obsession, seduction, fear, resentment, pursuit, and a continuous chase and thrill that the characters live. 

Before this movie, Fincher never seemed interested in evoking twisted marital bonds in his cinematic universe. But once Gone Girl the novel first came out, Fincher showed great interest in it and was later on assigned as a director of the project after the writer submitted her manuscript to Fox studios.

The majority of film critics and lovers agreed that this is Rosemund Pike’s performance of a lifetime.

Gone Girl garnered numerous awards and nominations in a variety of categories with praise for its direction in particular which comes as no surprise, then Pike’s performance, the screenplay, and the soundtrack. 

At the 87th Oscar Academy Awards, Rosemund Pike received a nomination for Best Actress. 

The film received four nominations at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards: Best Director for Fincher, Best Actress in a Drama for Pike, Best Screenplay for Gillian Flynn, and Best Original Score.

Pike received a nomination for Best Actress at the 68th British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs). The National Board of Review included the film in their list of top ten films of the year,] and the soundtrack was nominated for the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media.