I finally saw Donnie Darko (2001) the other night, after many months of wanting to watch it (my last attempt – with B and D – turned into a nice long gab session, so the film sat in its box). I thought that the film was beautifully done and truly creepy. The lead who played Donnie was able to convincingly switch from awkward teenage boy into sleep-walking lunatic with amazing simplicity, aided in part by the sharp cut in appearances of “Frank,” the bizarre bunny who struck me as 33% Mothman (yeah, I know the movie came later, but I saw it first, ok?), 33% of the weird bunny from The Shining (yeah, the scene they usually don’t show on the TV version), and 33% Bugs Bunny after a 10 day binge on carrots.
I was very pleased by the fact that I didn’t figure out what was going to happen until towards the very end; the film does an excellent job of keeping you in the dark – is Frank an alien? a bizarre traveler from the future? a hallucination? And, as I said, I was *creeped out* the entire movie.
But I have a question that I’m hoping someone who’s smarter than me might explain. Donnie, during a classroom scene where he was protesting the mantra of a local self-help guru, makes this big deal about how he believes there are more than two choices in life – more than two emotions (in that case, Love and Fear, the self-helper’s proclaimed spectrum of human emotion). Donnie raves about the enormous potential and range of emotion and choice.
So, why, when he does his little time traveling trick, does he think that getting killed is going to do a lick of good? Why doesn’t he just time travel himself back to the bedroom scene with his girlfriend and then – instead of going to the house where all the bad stuff happens – why doesn’t he just snuggle up close and stay home? The movie seems to say, in other words, that there are, in fact, only two paths to take for Donnie – one deadly for someone else, one deadly for him. What happened to Donnie’s vehement arguement about the failure of a binary system?
Now, I realize that this happy ending wouldn’t have really suited the film’s dark approach, but to me, it made more logical sense. In such a case, I feel like it is incumbent on the filmmaker to clarify this decision, which didn’t seem to happen. What am I missing? Was the whole sequence just a dream – a what-if scenario prior to the normal progression of events that led to his death? Or was it “just in the script” that this sacrifice is the one Donnie chose to make?
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I’m sure I’m not smarter than you, but I’ve been thinking about writing on Darko, so I’ll offer some suggestions. That logical inconsistency is a weakness in the film, one that didn’t really come up in the director’s commentary on the film. According to Kelly, sacrificing himself was something Donnie “had to do.”
I can see how the love and fear binary might actually be subsumed in Donnie’s sacrifice–his actions are done out of “love,” while at the same time, he *was* certainly afraid.
I think that one of the implications–in the director’s commentary–is that Donnie’s being absent when the jet engine hits his house creates a “tangent universe” that must be eliminated. It’s not the most logically sound film, and I needed the commentary to completely understand what Kelly was trying to do.
On the other hand, it is a beautiful, atmospheric, trippy little film. Accoring to IMDB, Kelly’s next project will involve some time-bending as well.
“it is a beautiful, atmospheric, trippy little film” (chuck)
I totally agree – I really enjoyed it, despite the logical inconsistencies. I’m still torn on director’s commentary as an idea, much the same way that I don’t always like having an author break down the thoughts that drove their own book.
In this case, I had no choice – I watched the film on HBO.
I have mixed feelings about director’s commentaries, too. In this case, I was just trying to explain the director’s logic as it pertained to those inconsistencies. That sure doesn’t mean he’s right about the interpretation of the film.
In general, director’s commentaries usually don’t offer much. In some cases, they can help viewers recognize allusions to earlier films or offer technical explanations that might be relevant. Spike Lee’s commentary on 25th Floor works well. I also like Tom Tykwer and Franka Potente’s commentary on Run Lola Run.
No, I agree they can be useful – in this case, they helped a lot. I think it does speak to the power of the film that even though it has a rather (in my mind) large logical break, I still enjoyed it.
Usually those things just make me dislike the film. I find it interesting, however, that I’m disappointed in the darker ending with Donnie Darko. Often, I find myself disappointed because the film-maker took the easy, “neat” way out, leaving me wishing for a darker, less tidy ending. Now, when I get the dark, I whine.
Consistency is the hobgoblin, I suppose…
The two choices thing is because the tangent universe where donnie is not in his bed when the plane crashes is going to destroy the real universe.Hence all the clouds and the sky falling. The reason he dies is because he realises that there are worse things in life than death, like all the things that happen to gretchen and everybody else. Frank is being controlled by some higher power (god?) and he gets donnie to do things which all help him come to this realisation.So really he had other choices but his death was the only one that could stop the tangent universe.
I think this is a really great film and I love films.My view on the whole why didn’t Donnie travel back to another point in time and change the future from there is that:you can only travel back or forward in time trough a portal as is said in the movie so he didn’t actually have any power over it so like the engine he traveled back to the house and he was in his room,so to save Gretchen, Frank and his mother and sister.
So he never meets Gretchen so she doesn’t die he won’t kill frank he won’t uncover cunninghams ‘secret’ so his mother wont have to go on that plane and his sister wont go because of the grieving.Anyway thats what I think oh and by the way I’m Irish!
ok, i’m probably way off the mark here but my interpretation as to why donnie did not just “go back to the bedroom with his girlfriend and stay home” is because of frank saving him the night of the plane engine, he in a way *cheated death*, and i remember him talking to the science teacher about “god’s path” which after frank saving him from dying, was completely thrown off track. Also donnie was a very disturbed boy, who saw things he couldn’t get rid of. Maybe death was just an escape route from life, from all the shit he had to deal with, from frank haunting him all over again and ultimatly to get away from his own mind and thoughts about the world and the forces within it, i also agree with Dan H about him maybe doing it to save alot of other people around him from the pain and suffering which was to follow the plane engine incident….also i know this has nothing to do with why he chose to die, but i found it extremely ironic, not to mention saddening that he did infact “die alone”. No-one else knew what he knew, or understood him. I think that is what made me stop and stare at the screen for an hour after the film had ended. It truly was moving, bizarre and will fuck with your head for weeks. I’m never going to be quiet the same again.
ok, i’m probably way off the mark here but my interpretation as to why donnie did not just “go back to the bedroom with his girlfriend and stay home” is because of frank saving him the night of the plane engine, he in a way *cheated death*, and i remember him talking to the science teacher about “god’s path” which after frank saving him from dying, was completely thrown off track. Also donnie was a very disturbed boy, who saw things he couldn’t get rid of. Maybe death was just an escape route from life, from all the shit he had to deal with, from frank haunting him all over again and ultimatly to get away from his own mind and thoughts about the world and the forces within it, i also agree with Dan H about him maybe doing it to save alot of other people around him from the pain and suffering which was to follow the plane engine incident….also i know this has nothing to do with why he chose to die, but i found it extremely ironic, not to mention saddening that he did infact “die alone”. No-one else knew what he knew, or understood him. I think that is what made me stop and stare at the screen for an hour after the film had ended. It truly is moving, bizarre and will fuck with your head for weeks. I’m never going to be quiet the same again.
I saw D.D. last night so it’s been on the noggin’ for most of the morning. Some of these commentaries are really helpful in shedding some interpretive lights on things. However, nobody seemed to mention the concept of D’s “insanity” vs “giftedness.” He was clearly a bright person…so is it the nature of the intelligent to be plagued by too much insight? Or is it the nature of the intelligent to be plagued by any number of very real (and relatively accurately depicted) mental diseases (ie schizophrenia)? Anyway, great movie…fun to think about. And who’s Frank?!?!?
[f-bomb twice] mother mother [f-bomb twice] these are the words that best describe my feelings toward you and your damn movie! [f-bomb three times]pee pee [f-bomb once] pee poopie poop
[EDIT: Clearly, I cleaned this charming comment up. I keep it only to explain that because of this, comments on this particular post are closed.]
Comments on this thread are closed, as the edited comment above indicates.