Hey, I’m participating in a blogathon! Cinematic Corner is hosting a blogathon on the White Swan/Black Swan Parallels in characters.

Here are his rules.

1. Choose max 3 characters to write about.
2. You can also feature characters from TV series.
3. We are not looking for doppelgangers – we are looking for one person with two sides. For example in Black Swan you can write about Nina and her alter ego but not about Lily and Nina, which are two different people. You can write about Gollum/Smeagol but you cannot write about Bette and Dot – the Siamese twins from AHS: Freakshow – because technically they are two different people.
4. Write about why you chose the character
5. Provide a theory on what causes the two different sides and what are the signs and contradictions between the two.
6. Link back to the post and feature the logo for the blogathon
7. Let me know you wrote the post either in the comment, via twitter – @lady_sati or my e-mail – sati.margaret@gmail.com
8. The deadline is April 30th
9. Most importantly? Have fun!

If I was going to participate, it was inevitable what I was going to talk about. Simply put, I cannot stop thinking about Gone Girl, and more specifically, this character.

I am speaking of course, of Amy Dunne.

Let’s start with Amy’s White Swan. For the first half of the movie, Amy is set up as an innocent victim. In the diary flashbacks, she falls in love with Nick Dunne and over the course of five years, she falls out of love. And her husband turns both neglectful and abusive… or so we think.

You ever tell your side of the story and try to make yourself sound as innocent as possible? Well, that’s what Amy is doing with her diary, pushed to the N’th degree.

So, here we have ‘Diary Amy’ which in fact is a fictional character very loosely based on the real Amy Elliott Dunne. Amy says that some of the early elements in her diary were inspired by her real life, with certain liberties. In that way, Diary Amy is basically a more mature version of Amazing Amy, the fictional character created by her parents, loosely based on their daughter’s childhood. Amy explains in an early scene that all her life she’s had this alternate version of herself that she could never live up to, which is the reason she’s so messed up.

Amazing Amy, Diary Amy, and Cool Girl Amy are just three variations on the same concept. The ‘good’ Amy. The Amy that doesn’t actually exist.

So, who is the real Amy Elliot Dunne? This is where we meet Amy’s Black Swan, because the big twist of the movie is that Amy staged her disappearance and framed her husband so that he would go to prison, all because he had an affair. And this was a fairly complex plan to put together, including faking a pregnancy. Amy even plans to kill herself and make it seem like Nick did it.

But what’s so fascinating about Amy Elliot Dunne is that she’s not completely evil. She has moments of vulnerability and insecurity. There’s a crucial scene when she’s robbed where she’s legitimately terrified and hurt, and when she murders Desi, for a brief moment she looks genuinely sorry, before moving on. This last moment in particular shows that Amy does not have ASPD, as people with this disease show no remorse for those they have wronged.

So really, how much sanity is left in Amy, and is it at all possible for some of that sanity to be salvaged? These are the questions that keep her husband Nick up at night. And this is part of the reason why Nick ultimately stays with her. He has a drive to get a clear picture on who his wife is. To crack the code.

But Amy doesn’t mind. She’ll play the game with him.