Donnie Darko

 

Donnie Darko turned 20 years old last week and remains one of the more enthralling and intriguing movies I have ever seen. Equal parts science fiction, psychological thriller, and satire make this a very unique movie. It's also a movie almost needs to be seen more than once to be fully and completely appreciated. 

Donnie Darko (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a troubled teen who regularly sees a psychiatrist, Dr. Lillian Thurman (played by Katherine Ross) and frequently sleepwalks, waking up in all sorts of places. One fateful night, he is awoken by a strange man in a ghoulish rabbit costume named Frank and told to follow him. By doing so, Donnie narrowly misses being killed when a jet engine crashes into his house. He is cryptically informed by Frank that the world will end in 28 Days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. The family is temporarily put up in a hotel while the FAA try to deal with this freak accident, all the more mysterious because no one seems to be able to figure out where it came from. Frank returns another night and instructs Donnie to break the school water main with an axe, which he does and causes the school to flood. Because of this and school getting cancelled, Donnie gets a chance to talk to the new girl in school, Gretchen (played by Jena Malone). Meanwhile, the authorities are still trying to figure out who vandalized the school. School teacher Kitty Farmer (played by Beth Grant) lays the blame at fellow teacher Karen Pomeroy (played by Drew Barrymore) for assigning the Graham Green story "The Destructors," which featured a similar incident. In response, Kitty brings in a local motivational speaker, Jim Cunningham (played by Patrick Swayze) to speak to the kids. The two hit it off and a relationship begins to form. When Donnie discusses Frank with his psychiatrist, she starts to believe that Donnie is suffering from daylight hallucinations and schizophrenia. Frank asks Donnie if he believes in time travel, which sends him to his science teacher, Kenneth Monnitoff (played by Noah Wyle), who discusses it with him briefly and gives him a book titled "The Philosophy of Time Travel." As Donnie continues to see Frank, his reality begins to spiral as he tries to figure out what is real and what isn't. 

The film was written and directed by Richard Kelly. Over the years, there have been two separate cuts of the film, with the theatrical cut and a longer director's cut that adds in an extra 20 minutes of deleted scenes. Of the two, the general consensus seems to be that the shorter, theatrical cut is the stronger version of the film with the longer director's cut tending to over-explain what is going on in the film. It is certainly my preferred version of the film as oddly enough one of the film's strengths is the ambiguity as to what exactly is going on throughout the story, with the film giving you just enough information to figure it out for yourself. The debates it sparked over the years since the film came out was part of the fun of the film, with each interpretation being just as valid as the last. It is also impressive what Kelly and his crew were able to pull off with the relatively small budget of just over 4 million dollars as they properly brought the more creative and outlandish aspects of the story to life quite well. Yet, what makes the film work so well is the fact that it focuses on the characters and their relationships, and how Donnie impacts each one of them throughout the roughly 28 days the film's story spans across. I also need to single out the very atmospheric synth score by Michael Andrews that perfectly sets the mood throughout the film.

The film has a great cast led by Jake Gyllenhaal who gives a magnificent performance as Donnie Darko. It's a challenging role but Jake really rises to the challenge playing a character whose sense of what is real and what is not is fracturing as he tries to make sense of it. The performance runs the gamut of the highs of calling others out on their bullshit, especially an epic scene as a school assembly where Donnie goes toe to toe with Jim Cunningham that is a joy to watch to the lows as Donnie begins to spiral emotionally. Jena Malone does well as Gretchen and plays off Gyllenhaal quite well as the relationship between the two characters grows. Drew Barrymore plays Karen Pomeroy as basically the English teacher we all wish we had. She is insightful and quite cool. Beth Grant is great as her polar opposite, the very conservative teacher, and school dance team coach, Kitty Farmer, who has gone all in on the swill local motivational speaker Jim Cunningham is selling. Grant really sells her character's conviction though, culminating in a scene late in the film as she, near tears, is trying to convince Donnie's mom to help chaperone the dance team's trip to Nationals with a line that has lived in my head rent free for the last twenty years, and fans of the movie already know what it's going to be, "Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparklemotion!" It is a moment that is genuinely hilarious all because of Grant's performance and just how out of touch her character is. Speaking of Jim Cunningham, Patrick Swayze is great in the role of this hack motivational speaker with some real dark secrets. It's such a departure from the roles he usually played that it was fun to watch, especially in the scene where Donnie calls him out in the middle of a school assembly. 

Donnie Darko is one of those films the defines the term "cult film". It is a film that didn't do well initially at the box office, but was discovered once it hit video and whose popularity slowly grew over the years. It is especially true of a movie like this that people naturally want to talk about and analyze. I could present my own theories about the film, but it would be far more fun to encourage others to check it out, experience it for themselves, and form their own theories.