Best Line in a movie, period.
By the way, this one is rated R: not for the kiddies.
So, summarize Donnie Darko...ho boy.
It’s the
80s (again) and this high-class, stepford community is coexisting nicely...sans
Donald Darko, whose mental instability, intimidating smarts and misanthropic
attitude have made him a social pariah. One night, after another fight with his
mother, Donnie is called back out to do his sleep walking by a strange voice.
It comes from a giant rabbit (rabbit suit, but still,) who tells him the world
is going to end in about 28 days. Moments later, a jet-engine crashes into
Donnie’s room. He’s saved, but this is only the beginning. As Donnie is forced
(I think?) to do the rabbit man’s bidding, and watch his world break apart at
the seams. As to how, or why it’s breaking, you’re better off asking someone
else. I freely admit that, even after my third watch, I am still not smart
enough to fully understand what’s going on.
It’s
liberating to admit, really.
Confusing
as the story is for me, everything else melds together well. The music and
overall sound effects help create this feeling of being detached from the
‘perfect world’ we’re thrust into, likely letting us see it from our own heroes
perspective. Even more interesting, that music and sound also helps us shift
into a mood that’s darker towards the end of the film as everything slowly
begins to crack. Overall, combined with the free-form camera angles, everything
just feels off, somehow. It clashes
with the white-class suburbia, and I ate up every bit of it.
With our
disorienting atmosphere comes out mostly-realistic characters. Most of them are
interesting because they take a different approach to the rich-kids. Instead of
being high-class cast-outs who listen only to mozart and such, we got teenage
boys shooting glass bottles in a junkyard while running my childhood with the
smurfs. It’s more natural to play these guys like true teens with access to
better toys, but it also backfires by making them some of the most unlikeable
people you will ever meet. I hated
Donnie’s friends for being utterly useless, for what they did to Smurfette, but
mostly just for being colossal crap-heads.
However,
there lies one exception to all of this: Donnie. I am forever fascinated with
Donnie, even if he is a jerk to his mother.
He’s obviously not a bad kid, as he won’t steal or hurt anyone of his
own free will, and yet he’s clearly suffering from some severe mental issues in
a society that just doesn’t know what
to do with him. Add this utterly crazy and confusing series of events to that
list of problems and it becomes insanely hard not to feel for the kid. Besides,
he’s also insanely smart, and drops some of the most well-timed F-bombs in
cinema history.
For Example:
So, obviously, I really liked
Donnie. I liked him so much that I wish he had been the center of attention
more often than he actually was. This movie has quite a few subplots with the
Jim Cunningham plot, the deal with Donnie’s girlfriend, and a few others. Now
none of them are badly written, and they do all merge together in the end, but
I just wish they had backed off just a little. I want more of Frank the Bunny’s
influence over Donnie, not how much that stick-up-her-butt teacher has a
hard-on for Jim Cunningham or how forced the romance between Gretchen and
Donnie feels (sorry, I just didn’t feel it).
Maybe we would have gotten a straighter answer if we had spent more time
with Frank and Donnie and less with with poor Churita getting picked on for her
bad accent.
Ah, but this of course leads to the
elephant in the room: the ending. Leaving out spoilers, I have to say that my
confusion over what happened didn’t take away from how bloody well filmed the
whole thing is. While I’m still scratching my head over the exact details, I
was treated to a well filmed slow-pan shot with an absolutely heart-breaking
rendition of Mad World playing in the
background. It’s dark and tragic, two words that fit with the whole rest of the
movie.
So, in short, this is worth a
watch, but not casually. If you don’t want to think too much than don’t pop
this one in, as you’ll be left behind very fast. However, if you’re willing to
keep sharp and know a bit more about the theory of time-travel than I do, than
you’re in for a treat. Enjoy the awesome 80s music, black sense of humor, and
the sheer anxiety of watching the world come to an end thanks to the world’s
most famous’ wtf’ movie made so far.
Now we’ve done aliens, Vampires,
pretty men in tights, moon people, and depressed 30-somethings with no lives….
How about something Sweet?
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