Donnie Darko

This review is based on the original Donnie Darko film and not the director’s cut version, for the record. With that in mind, here goes. The website for the director’s cut of the film warns me to “Pay close attention. You could miss something.” Well, like Roger Ebert, I must have missed something. By the sounds of things, from the hundreds of websites cropping up all over the internet trying to explain this piece of existential fluff, there’s an awful lot of variance in terms of what exactly could be “missed” when it comes to Richard Kelly’s debut film, Donnie Darko. In that respect, I’ll try to keep this as concise as possible and try to avoid racing off on any philosophical questions or any sort of “this is what happened” diatribe. Instead, let’s look at the actual film.

Donnie Darko is from 2001, is Richard Kelly’s directorial debut, and stars Jake Gyllenhaal as the title character. For the record, the film is also ranked at #113 on the IMDB’s Top 250 Films as voted by the users. It’s right above Akira Kurosawa’s Ran, Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke, and just below Superbad. Richard Kelly had previously directed a pair of short films in the late 90s before settling in on writing and directing Donnie Darko. Kelly also wrote the script for Tony Scott’s Domino.

As mentioned, Jake Gyllenhaal stars in the film as the title character. Donnie is a troubled kid who apparently sleepwalks and is in therapy. He discusses many of his deepest thoughts with his therapist (Katharine Ross). One day, a jet engine from a commercial plane falls into Donnie’s bedroom. Donnie avoids death by obeying a voice in his head, which is represented by “Frank”. Frank is an apparently imaginary friend in a rabbit suit, with a strange mask, that starts to tell Donnie to do different things and tells him that the end of the world is approaching in just over 28 days. Frank tells Donnie to do a series of different tasks that will help bring about this end of the world, including flooding the school and setting a motivational speaker’s (Patrick Swayze) house on fire. As a result of these seemingly destructive incidents, something good or revelatory actually happens – the motivational speaker’s house fire reveals a den of kiddie porn and, during the day of school missed a result of the flood, Donnie meets Gretchen (Jena Malone).

Donnie also takes an interest in time travel to perhaps stave off the end of the world, leading to conversations with his science teacher (Noah Wyle) and the exploration of a book that director Kelly wrote to try to explain Donnie Darko (in the movie, it’s obviously not a book with the same premise, although it might have been helpful) entitled “The Philosophy of Time Travel.” Donnie uses the book and the various principles in it, written by an aged town resident known as “Grandma Death”, to try and sort out time travel and figure out how he can travel through time to change some events…..or something. Donnie starts seeing ripples in space-time and starts seeing strange things. Eventually, one thing leads to another and Donnie makes his way back in time to the point of the original jet engine incident and, this time, elects to stay in bed to gleefully die. Okay.

Donnie Darko is somewhat of a cult film and was greeted with an original ho-hum at the box office, laying down only about $500,000 in original profits and opening and closing within a relative space-time hiccup. It did do well at Sundance and a bunch of critics liked the layering of the story enough to recommend it. When the film hit DVD, it started to pick up steam and gathered a crowd of admirers which eventually prompted the release of a director’s cut version and a re-release in theatres.

Jake Gyllenhaal is great in this, no question about it. His performance is very good and he is a nice fit with Jena Malone, as their relationship is very believable within the context of having two rather troubled characters finding some form of unity. The notion of Gretchen become such an integral part of the finish, though, had be mildly perplexed in that I didn’t believe she had such a philosophical pull on Donnie’s character. I bought their relationship within the context of a sort of teen-angst respite, nothing more. That isn’t the fault of Malone or Gyllenhaal, of course, but rather the fault of an oft-fuzzy script and storyline which, as evidenced by the numerous “I don’t get it, but I think I do” commentaries and websites out there, seems to be the goal of Kelly’s work. Fair enough, but when that interferes in my enjoyment of the film rather than enhance it, I get turned off to the project rather quickly.

The film crams in some characters that seem to have more weight on the context of the story than they actually do, like Ms. Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore), Donnie’s teacher, or Kitty Farmer (Beth Grant), Donnie’s intrusive and odd health teacher. The characters also include the normal variety of students, from bullies to nerds to everyone in between, and the parents of Donnie. The gang’s all here, ready for a John Hughes style showdown, complete with 80s music and parent-teen relationship angst. Throw in the bunny and some loose philosophical problems, you’ve got Donnie Darko to a tee.

There are other films that leave us with questions or with “WTF” looks on our faces. I am, for example, a big fan of David Lynch. His films quite often give us a picture of a woman riding a horse naked eating a tub of peanut butter with her bare hands, but somehow that visual seems to generate some normative clarity and actually builds towards something important. Lynch is eerily cohesive in setting up his narratives. Kelly’s Donnie Darko, on the other hand, is so game to roll the wheel of plot devices and “mood” ideas that eventually the rich characters and good acting gets lost in the hypothetical plot shuffle. The film is like Lynch for the teenage set, except with more masturbatory cinematography. It’s almost as if Kelly had a few hundred plot ideas for how his nutty existential bunny story would work out and, without knowing which ending was which, tossed them all up in the air and filmed the process. Some people will claim to have Donnie Darko all figured out, which is great. But even Kelly claims, sometimes, to have no idea what it’s about. Other times, however, he claims to have a fairly good idea:

“At midnight on October 2, a Tangent Universe branches off the Primary Universe around the time when Donnie is called out of his bedroom by Frank, immediately before the appearance of the Artifact, which is the faulty jet engine. The unstable Tangent Universe will collapse in just over 28 days and take the Primary Universe with it if not corrected. Closing the Tangent Universe is the duty of the Living Receiver, Donnie, who wields certain supernatural powers to help him in the task. Those who have died/will die within the Tangent Universe (and would not have died otherwise) are the Manipulated Dead (Frank and Gretchen Ross). Manipulated Dead Frank, at least, is also given certain powers in that he is able to subtly understand what is happening and have the ability to contact and influence the Living Receiver via the Fourth Dimensional Construct (water). All others within the orbit of the Living Receiver are the Manipulated Living (e.g. Ms. Pomeroy, Dr. Monnitoff), subconsciously drawn to push him towards his destiny to close the Tangent Universe and, according to The Philosophy of Time Travel, die by the Artifact. There are two “Franks” in the story: the living boyfriend of Donnie’s sister Elizabeth, and the Manipulated Dead Frank who appears to Donnie as a premonition from the future in the disturbing rabbit suit (the second Frank is dead, or undead; at the end of the film he is killed by Donnie). Dead Frank is aware of Donnie’s fate and destiny.”

That’s a bit of an amalgamation of Kelly’s summarization of Donnie Darko as pulled from interviews and his DVD commentaries. Gotcha. I guess the idea here is to check logical ideas at the door. It is a film, after all, and not all films play by rules. In fact, it’s usually better when they don’t. I’ve seen my share of formulaic films with straightforward plots that bore me silly and I’ve seen my share of unpredictable masterpieces. I’ve also seen my fair share of films that, in their infinite ability to twist their own plot at will, lose my interest altogether because of a lack of cohesive parts. I’m not saying I didn’t like Donnie Darko because it was too confusing, I’m saying I didn’t like it because it quite often bored me and toyed with the idea of presenting these earth-shattering ideologies without actually comprehending the ideas. In other words, it’s like watching teenagers discuss existential philosophy and “wowing” one another simply because they’ve created a philosophy that nobody else can figure out.

Add to that equation a pile of characters with no real purpose that are treated like they should have one and you have a mess that simply doesn’t add up in any satisfying way. Donnie Darko may well be one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen and it is quite likely that I’ll have a few people telling me that I didn’t “get it.” Fine, great. Kelly’s failing in the film is evidenced in the notion that I simply couldn’t care less if I “got it” or not. When the website of the film is better than the film, there’s a problem. Gyllenhaal aside, there’s not a lot to this crowded attempt at a philosophical fairy tale.

Trailer: