The SmarK DVD Rant for Donnie Darko
“Why do you always wear that stupid bunny suit?”
“Why do you always wear that stupid man suit?”
Puberty can be a rough time, especially in the 80s when spandex and hairspray could threaten the masculinity of even the manliest of kids. Even moreso if you’re a paranoid schizophrenic with occasional pyromania, like Donnie Darko.
Now, I see lots of movies, and most strive for mediocrity and a quick buck and succeed in both matters. It’s rare to see anything with something to SAY, especially one as fundamentally weird as this one with a lead character who shouldn’t be likeable. Does it always work? No, sadly. Sometimes movies can collapse under their own pretensions if not handled with surgical skill, and I think this is the case here. But I tell ya, I was cheering for it to work all the way up until the moment that it didn’t.
The Film:
As I believe I’ve mentioned once or twice before, time travel movies give me a headache. Donnie Darko is not, however, such a movie, although it’s one of the themes within. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff going on, most of which doesn’t make sense until you’ve seen it a couple of times.
Look at it this way — the movie is itself one giant puzzle, looked at from the perspective of someone stuck in the middle of it and trying to figure out the big picture without having the puzzle box handy. There’s no real “solution” to the puzzle, which is one of the things that really disappointed me the first time I saw the movie. The second time, knowing where it was going, everything made much more sense and all the themes clicked together in a way they didn’t the first time. However, the movie then became totally different and worked in a totally different way.
Let’s start from the top — the first time you see this movie, you will likely be VERY let down with the ending. I’m gonna warn you of that going in because the entire movie is based on a countdown to apocalypse delivered by a giant bunny rabbit. Title cards count down for the entire two hours, leading you to believe that something big, gigantic and altogether earth-shaking is going to happen when that countdown ends. What does happen makes sense, but many people were expecting a lot more. Maybe because the limited promotion for the movie made it out to be a “taut, heart-pounding thriller!” (I just made that quote up, but you get the idea) when it’s really a thoughtful and heartfelt (albeit dark and weird) look into the mind of a teenager in the 80s. John Waters this ain’t.
Having said that, here’s the story — Jake Gyllenhaal (the guy likely to replace Tobey as Spider-Man) is the title character, the very disturbed kid Donnie Darko. The name, love interest Jena Malone tells him, sounds like a superhero. And he is, kind of. A troubled childhood has left him deeply messed up, with past history of arson and schizophrenia. One day, after taking his medication, a plane engine drops on his house. No plane, just the engine. That’s the kind of movie you’re getting into here. He awakes from a frequent sleepwalking expedition on a golf course, after chatting with a six foot tall bunny rabbit named Frank, and has a countdown of 28 days, 6 hours and 12 seconds written on his arm. It’s all presented very reasonably and he takes it equally in stride, given his mental problems — this kind of stuff is par for the course. Pardon the pun.
Frank, however, has an ulterior motive under his bunny suit, and begins convincing Donnie to do things he wouldn’t normally do, like burning down the house of a self-help guru, for instance. As his life goes into a deeper spiral downwards while his love-life takes off for the first time, he begins to realize that there’s a deeper purpose to his manipulation at the hands of the rabbit, and finds himself exploring the ideas of time travel and pre-destiny.
*** SPOILERS AHEAD — SKIP TO THE NEXT PORTION IF YOU DON’T WANT THINGS RUINED FOR YOU ***
Okay, you’re still here, so let’s get into this thing a bit deeper. If you’ve watched the movie once and were left confused by the plot and the themes, here’s a primer.
When you watch the movie again (and you should), go into it knowing that the whole purpose of Donnie’s visions is to prevent the death of Gretchen and set the timeline right again. The whole movie is a parallel timeline — 28 days that MIGHT have been if the engine hadn’t killed him — or might even have been a dream, it’s never really clarified and is very much open to interpretation. The first time I watched the movie, I was too busy getting creeped out by the visions and Jake’s awesome blank psycho stare to really pay attention to the little things, but there’s tons of them. For instance, watch for recurring images of water and metal — water is the transport for time travel, and metal is the vessel. The movie is also about destiny v. pre-destiny — Donnie foreshadows this in his conversation with the science teacher, when he asks if seeing the future can help to prevent it by giving the viewer a choice. In the end, after shooting Frank, Donnie is again given a choice and the second time chooses his own death, which in turn saves that of Gretchen and Frank. The stuff that just seemed weird the first time through — like the water tunnels that represent arrows to the time portal — make a lot more sense once you get a handle on what the movie is about. There’s also some great little touches, like Donnie being presented with the moral question about finding a wallet on the street and then actually finding Jim’s wallet on the street (which in turn gives him the address so he can burn it down). So again, the question becomes whether Donnie actually does have a choice, or if fate or God or whoever is leaving him little clues like that along the way and pushing him towards the “proper” destiny. Or maybe he’s just wacko, I dunno — the movie really leaves the question up to the viewer for himself to decide.
*** END OF SPOILERS ***
So if you skipped here I’m assuming you’re one of the people who hasn’t watched the movie yet, so I’ll just summarize by saying that it’s a weird movie, but filled with very human characters who react to the weirdness in very human ways. Donnie, in particular, sees his life and world falling apart all around him and is more concerned with getting into his girlfriend’s pants and thus relieving his desperate loneliness and sexual frustration. Rather than get caught up in walking around and making deep statements about life, he’s a teenager who is acting like one.
At it’s heart, the movie is about that — the experience of growing up and being different, and how parents are often more apt to shuffle their problems off to a therapist until one day they’re opening fire on the school.
Ultimately, though, I think Donnie Darko fails because while it’s a fascinating exercise in puzzle-solving, that’s really all it amounts to as far as the big story goes. If director Richard Kelly would have had something better to pay it off with, it would have been into the “excellent” category, but as is it’s only very, very good. It’s not for lack of trying, however, and I urge anyone who loves intellectual challenges (like Dark City, to name one) to give this passed-over gem a look for themselves and come to their own judgment about it. It’s incredibly imaginative, original, and well worth the effort of hunting it down and spending two hours on it, trust me.
The Video:
Good-looking 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen. Most of the movie is very dark (expected given the name and the theme) and blacks hold up well, although I could see some compression artifacts on scene transitions and the SFX shots. Given the low-budget nature of the movie, however, it’s great for what it is.
The Audio:
Available with either Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0 surround, it’s again a good-sounding mix, although I was hoping for a bit more oomph in some of the more dream-like sequences and portals. Dialogue is clear, since it’s mostly a dialogue movie, and his forays into the looking glass are suitably odd-sounding.
The Extras:
Tons of stuff here, making the DVD an extra-good bargain.
– Audio commentaries with director Richard Kelly & actor Jake Gyllenhaal, and another one with “cast & crew”. I only listened to the first one, so I’m not sure who “cast & crew” are, exactly, but the one I listened to was pretty fascinating, especially for a first-time director and young actor, as he explained a lot of the themes and plot points in great detail and cleared up a couple of points that were muddied by studio interference. And you have to listen to the commentary just to hear Jake’s impression of Christopher Walken playing the giant bunny. You’ll howl.
– Title pages from the “Philosophy of Time Travel” book featured in the movie. Neat but ultimately nothing exciting. There are, however, a couple of Easter Eggs (apropos for a movie with rabbits as a theme) within it that unlock an additional deleted scene and another trailer. They’re not hard to find, so good hunting!
– The infomercials for Jim Cunningham’s self-help course, both alone and with fake commentary from the “director” and a former client turned president of the company. Funny stuff, especially Patrick Swayze’s subtle character moment with the little kid.
– Deleted scenes! About 40 minutes worth by my count, broken into 20 sections. With or without director commentary, and there’s some real good stuff cut out here, including Donnie reading a really spooky poem and an entire subplot about Watership Down.
– A gallery that has all the pages from the bizarre DonnieDarko.com website laid out for you, in case you (like most) couldn’t figure out what the hell the page was about. A couple of surprising obituaries highlight this.
– Video for the “Mad World” song that closes the movie.
– Trailer & TV spots. I never saw any of these either in the theatres or on TV, showing what kind of shit promotion Fox put behind it.
– Art gallery, cast & crew, production stills and the usual junk no one looks at.
The Ratings:
The Film: ****3/4
The Video: ***1/2
The Audio: ***1/2
The Extras: ****
