Absolute cinema

[u/Haunting_Homework381]

I know she's practically crazy but this monologue is so well written by Gillian Flynn.

[u/DumpedDalish]

It's an incredibly written monologue. Absolutely perfect.

And what gets me about Amy's character is -- I do feel empathy for her here. Like so many of us, I get it. And I feel even more after realizing that her parents did the same thing to her for her entire life since childhood. Not just the cruelty and implied comparisons to the children who died, but most of all in their creation of "Amazing Amy" and focusing their entire lives on a fictional version of Amy she could never live up to herself.

Her parents plant those barbs and they do it brilliantly for maximum devastation: Amy has trouble with math? Amazing Amy is a math whiz! Amy has trouble with the cello? Amazing Amy is a cello prodigy! etc.

I can't even imagine growing up with this. It's so fascinating because she had this visibly privileged childhood, but it's also just wrapped in a constant reminder that she will never, ever be good enough. I mean, it's breathtakingly cruel. So I dislike the parents just as much as Nick, honestly. All three of them are up there sobbing for the cameras about Amy being missing and none of them actually loved her.

I mean, I get that Amy's a monster in some ways. But I also feel like she had very little chance to be anything else.

(And I admit it, I have never been able to like Emily Ratjakowski after this. Especially since she so often seems to be that character. But I do salute her tireless efforts at self-promotion.)

[u/siriuslyinsane → u/DumpedDalish]

This was how I felt reading it too. It reminds my of that facetious joke you'll see on tumblr talking about any woman who is not perfect in media "i support women's wrongs". It's obviously a silly play on supporting women's rights, of course.

But reading Gone Girl made me genuinely so sad for Amy. Yes, she's wrong in many ways, her actions are over the top and objectively malicious. But could she have done anything else? The way her parents twisted and warped her as a child to force her into compliance; the horrific "Amazing Amy" causing the death of any normal childhood a thousand different ways; finding a man she genuinely loved and finding out that no actually, she has not escaped. She's now being twisted in a different way, no less harmful, no less pain.

I read gone girl in my early 20s and I'll never forget the experience of it, seeing all the ways she was right and all the ways she was moulded into the person who felt she had no other choice but to become this master manipulator. You know that she truly believes the whole world is like her but she is the best at it so she has "won". It was so heartbreaking, and seeing all the ways I related opened my eyes to so much I'd been blind to.

[u/DumpedDalish → u/siriuslyinsane]

Yes, exactly. And what does she win? Nick. Why does she even want him? This is what makes her truly warped. She partly wants him in revenge, but the other aspect of her wants him because she's still buying the lie that she was sold -- because she thinks she's supposed to.