Donnie Darko (character)

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Donald J. "Donnie" Darko is a fictional character in the film Donnie Darko. He is portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal.

[edit] Biography

The film begins with Donnie waking up in the middle of the road, seemingly far from his home. He does not act shocked, and we later learn that this is a regular occurrence for him. His relationship with his mother is somewhat weak (he calls her a 'bitch' to her face), and he and his sister get into profanity-ridden fights. It is revealed he has stopped taking his medicine, and that he goes to a psychiatrist, a fact he is not particularly happy about. Sometime later, the mysterious Frank, a six-foot-tall rabbit, lures him out of his home, telling him the precise time that the world will end. He wakes up at a location away from his house, and when he returns, he discovers that a jet engine has fallen on his house, crushing his room. He then begins to believe that Frank saved his life.

The next day Donnie goes to his private school. His English class is in the middle of a discussion on Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors" when a new girl, Gretchen, walks in late and asks where she should sit. Donnie's English teacher, Ms. Pomeroy, provocatively instructs Gretchen to "sit next to the boy you think is the cutest." After a few moments, Gretchen eyes Donnie and the teacher tells the girl sitting next to him to move. Later in the day, Donnie attends a gym class where he participates in an exercise in which he is asked to assign the motivation behind keeping the money from a lost wallet to either "fear" or "love." But Donnie refuses, saying that the entire spectrum of emotion is far more complex than those two simple extremes. His teacher takes him to the headmaster after he tells her to "Forcefully insert the Lifeline exercise card into [her] anus" (It is unknown if that is exactly what he said, although it is most likely that he said "Shove it up your ass," as his sister indicates while talking on the phone). Donnie is suspended from after-school activities for six months.

That night, Frank wakes up Donnie again and tells him to flood the school. Donnie obeys, breaking the school's water main with an axe. While waiting for the school bus with his friends the next morning, Donnie hears that school has been cancelled because of the flood. Meanwhile, the police and school officials are baffled because aside from the flooding, the solid-bronze school mascot, the Mongrel, has an axe stuck into its head and the phrase "they made me do it" has been burned into the pavement. According to detectives, the locker rooms have also been trashed and smeared with feces (which, according to a young schoolgirl talking with Donnie's sister, are baby mice). On his way home, Donnie spots Gretchen being harassed by two school bullies, and approaches to tell them that school was cancelled for the day. Gretchen asks Donnie to walk her home, to the chagrin of the bullies. Donnie tells Gretchen he is happy that school was cancelled, because otherwise they would not have had a chance to talk. He then awkwardly asks her to "go" with him, which she assents to.

Some time later, Frank asks Donnie if he believes in time travel. Donnie then questions his science teacher Dr. Monitoff about the idea, and the teacher gives him The Philosophy of Time Travel. To Donnie's surprise, the book was written by Roberta Sparrow, the 101-year-old woman nicknamed "Grandma Death." She lives alone in an old house on the edge of town and spends all day checking her mailbox and standing in the middle of the street.

Later, Donnie finds the wallet belonging to Jim Cunningham on the sidewalk. Cunningham is a successful motivational speaker whose methods Donnie had loudly denounced in front of a school assembly. Donnie and Gretchen then go on a date to a cinema; Gretchen falls asleep in the empty theatre and Frank appears. He and Donnie have a conversation, during which Donnie asks, "Why do you wear that stupid bunny-suit?" Frank replies, "Why do you wear that stupid man-suit?" After being asked by Donnie to remove his rabbit mask, Frank complies and reveals a human face with a mysterious (bullet) wound in his right eye. After asking Donnie, "Have you ever seen a portal?" Showing him an image of Jim Cunningham's house on the movie screen, Frank commands, "burn it to the ground." Donnie obeys again. The arriving firemen soon discover a secret room filled with pedophilic material. Meanwhile, Frank tells Donnie to write a letter to Grandma Death about his views on her book. (This might explain why Roberta is checking her mail all the time.) Donnie visits his psychologist and while under hypnosis, he accidentally reveals that he flooded the school and started the fire. His psychologist then urgently calls Donnie's mother, but only manages to leave a message due to her departure.

With both of their parents out of town, Donnie and Elizabeth decide to throw a large Halloween party. During the party, Elizabeth's boyfriend, also named Frank, drives off to pick up more beer. After a brief romantic interlude Donnie and Gretchen leave the party and ride their bikes to the basement of Grandma Death's house to see her cellar door (which Donnie's English teacher, Ms. Pomeroy, had earlier told him was the most beautiful phrase in the English language, according to "a famous linguist"). While there, they come upon the two school bullies already in the basement, presumably looking for the woman's well-known gem collection. A struggle ensues between Gretchen, Donnie, and the two other kids, and Gretchen is thrown out onto the road outside. The viewer then sees Roberta Sparrow standing in the middle of the same road, reading Donnie's letter, when a red Trans Am appears a short distance away. The bully assaulting Donnie furiously demands to know if Donnie called the police, to which Donnie replies "Deus ex Machina". The car swerves to avoid Grandma Death and runs over Gretchen, killing her. Two people emerge from the car—first, a kid in a clown suit, and then from the driver's seat, Frank, wearing a large bunny suit and holding the rabbit mask in his hand. Donnie runs to Gretchen and sees that she is dead. Donnie shoots Frank in the right eye, killing him.

Donnie then takes Gretchen's body in his arms and drives to the hilltop to watch the storm gathering strength. The plane carrying his mother and sister back from California passes through the storm, and one of its engines tumbles out of the sky after being ripped off the wing; the engine is then thrust back through the open time portal. A montage of past scenes viewed in reverse suggests Donnie traveling backwards in time. In the next scene, he is back in his bed on October 2, laughing. His sister comes home from her date and his mother lies down to sleep, just as in the beginning of the movie. The jet engine then crashes through the roof and into Donnie's room, killing him.

[edit] Powers and abilities

Throughout the Director's Cut of the movie, pages of the Philosophy of Time Travel are superimposed over scenes to explain that Donnie, the Living Receiver is gifted with fourth dimensional powers, including time control, "enhanced strength", telekinesis and power over fire and water, although in the film he is seen physically flooding a building and igniting a fire.

[edit] Disorders

Although it is suggested that Donnie is a paranoid schizophrenic during one of the DVD's deleted scenes, Darko's therapist tells him that he has been taking placebos; the director comments during the scene that there is in fact nothing wrong with Darko, but instead he's "onto something".