Anyone?
I’ll take a stab at it. Needless to say, there are
SPOILERS TO COME. LOTS OF THEM. DONT READ THIS IF YOU PLAN TO SEE THE MOVIE
It’s a self-perpetuating time loop that is constantly repeating the events of October 2-31. On October 31, the engine falls off of the 747 passes through the time portal to October 2, crashing into Donnie’s bedroom. On the same night (31), Frank, wearing the demonic bunny suit, runs over Gretchen, killing her, and is subsequently killed by Donnie, who shoots him in the eye. Frank goes back in time and leads Donnie throught the events of the next 28 days and 6 hours, up to the point that he and Gretchen are killed, thus creating the time loop. Donnie, through his conversations with Dr. Monnitoff and by reading The Philosophy of Time Travel realizes that he is actually in charge of his fate, and has the power to prevent Gretchen’s death. He finds a time portal, travels back to the night of the accident, and chooses to stay in his room and be killed rather than perpetuate the time loop that leads to the death of two innocent people.
It’s about predestination vs. free will. Donnie, being the only one to see the whole picture, is able to choose his path, but the path that leads to the most good is the predestined one (which Donnie refers to as “choosing God’s channel” in his conversation with Dr. Monnitoff). Thus, though he is able to choose whether to followed his predestined path, to choose not to follow it only makes things worse.
Donnie is a Christ figure. He is an innocent who knows the future, exposes a false prophet, (Jim Cunningham), and must choose to sacrifice himself to save the lives of innocents who, because they cannot see as he does, cannot save themselves.
Thank you!
I could argue the illogic of some stuff, but still, it makes more sense to me now.
stoid
You own. Thank you.
And thanks also to Stoid for starting this thread. I rented Donnie Darko last week and I’ve been percolating it fruitlessly ever since.
I’m happy I watched it JUST for the cover of “Mad World” at the end. Excellent!
Stoid and White Lightning: Thanks. I don’t intend for this to be taken as the definitive explanation, and I’m wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few holes in my interpretation, but I think I’ve got the basics covered.
I missed some of the Christ symbolism. Donnie, being guided by someone only he can communicate with, causes a flood and a holocaust.
Wait, so how does Frank know how to travel through time? He seemed to not really know what was going on when he ran over Gretchen.
Try this thread :
Daffy Darko
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=117411&highlight=Daffy+AND+Darko
That thread died an unjust death CalMeacham. You did good.
[Side note: “daffy:” did not show up in red.]
Forgive me for not being up with the Bible, but what prophet does Christ expose as a fraud?
Number Six’s explanation is very close to the DVD commentary. The creators also talk about a “shard” reality that splits off and gets out of control, and Donnie brings it back to normal by sacrificing himself.
I pretty much got what Number Six got out of it, although I don’t think that Frank was time-traveling. Rather, I think that Donnie was getting glimpses of the future that he couldn’t properly interpret, because humans aren’t supposed to be able to perceive time like that. So when kept having “conversations” with Frank, he was actually seeing the future, and trying to incorporate it into his normal, three-dimensional perceptions.
Very cool and weird movie.
The director’s explanation was not especially satisfying to me, but here’s what I’ve been able to put together based on the DVD commentary, The Philosophy of Time Travel (also on the DVD), and the official website. Fair warning, you may be better off ignoring it – I much prefered the explanation I thought of after first seeing the movie, and I think Number Six’s is better than the official one too. In fact, I consider Donnie Darko a prime example of why artists should avoid explaining their work – their explanations are often worse than the ones the audience can invent for themselves.
Anyway, for no discernable reason, “tangent universes” occasionally split off from the main (“real”) universe. In Donnie Darko, such a split occurs just a little while before the engine hits the Darko house. The bulk of the movie is set in the tangent universe. These tangent universes are unstable and cannot sustain themselves for more than a few weeks. If they collapse, they take the main universe out with them. To prevent this, someone is chosen through unknown means (by god?) to fix things. In this case, it’s Donnie. He has to send a metal object (the plane engine) from the tangent universe into the main universe. I’m not sure how this works, but the chosen one has special powers and I guess he kind of wraps the tangent universe up into the metal object and shoots it over to the main universe where things stabilize.
According to The Philosophy of Time Travel the metal object always ends up killing the main universe version of the chosen one, although it is unclear why this is necessary. Maybe cleaning up the tangent universe is like covering up a murder; you don’t want any living witnesses. The chosen one is the only person who will remember anything about the tangent universe. Others may have some dim impressions of what happened (that’s why Frank is rubbing his eye at the end of the movie), but no real memories of it.
People who die within the tangent universe (like Frank) may become ghosts that can travel back and forth in time within the tangent universe and act as a guide to the chosen one. I’m not sure why Gretchen doesn’t play this role as well, except that maybe her ghost figured Donnie would really go off the deep end and be unable to complete his task if he started seeing visions of his girlfriend dead.
Even living people in the tangent universe will unconsciously act to drive the chosen one towards the completion of his task. In Donnie Darko, they generally accomplish this by setting it up so Donnie is in such a wretched personal situation that he doesn’t mind sacrificing himself in the end. There are subtler ways they influence Donnie though, like how the teacher writing “Cellar Door” on the board led Donnie to be at Roberta Sparrow’s house on Halloween. It was also important that Donnie know when the plane would be overhead. That’s why Frank told him to burn down the Patrick Swayze character’s house, because that led to Mrs. Darko having to chaperone the dance trip and she told Donnie when her flight home would be.
But having died, Donnie won’t be around to burn down Cunningham’s house and expose him as a pedophile. One could argue that he helps more people by exposing Cunningham. Does saving the lives of two innocent people outweigh the damage a person like Cunningham could do to people’s lives?
Other than that small problem, I find Number Six’s explaination compelling…
Well, during the big musical interlude after Donnie gets squashed like a bug, you see Cunningham sitting up in bed and weeping. I’m guessing it’s not out of guilt over what he’d been doing to kids, otherwise he wouldn’t have been doing that to kids. I think it was over what he experienced after being arrested (which wasn’t shown in the movie, but you can imagine it was really unpleasant). So as far as this character goes, I’m hoping that his “dream” of what would happen if he got busted was enough to scare him out of doing it anymore. Not as satisfying as him getting caught and punished, but if he doens’t hurt any additional people, that’s good enough for me.
There’s a deleted scene on the DVD showing Donnie in his bedroom just after he’s been killed by the jet engine, and he is impaled on part of it with his eyes still open. The imagery is that of a pieta (sorry, don’t know how to get the accent mark over that word).
One of my favorite films.
Yes, but he didn’t even know Frank was a ghost. I think Frank is a much better choice than Gretchen, since he knew Gretchen, and had a relationship with her while having these visions. Plus, he would have recognized her as soon as she entered his life. Unless she was wearing some freaky mask.
Are you sure the DVD explains that Darko was randomly chosen? I got the impression from the movie that he was born to have some sort of greater meaning.
It just seems like he’s the center of the bazaro “alternate” universe.
There’s a lot about the film that doesn’t make sense (I didn’t rent the DVD).
Number Six
Didn’t three people die? The child, mother, and Gretchen?
What were the mother and father talking about in the hotel room, something about a schoolmate of theirs dieing on the way to the prom? The said he was “doomed” like they say Donnie is. Something like that?
You know, I’ve seen this godawful movie a few times now just trying to get the “buzz”.
I’ve reviewed and rehashed the commentary and what the creators were going for, etc.
And I can’t find anything at all that doesn’t fit much more reasonably into the following statement: Donnie is a severely undertreated schizophrenic. Nothing more. Nothing less. There is no valid religious imagery. The boy is simply clinical, and we see the world through his eyes. As a result, our own sanity and reason makes us look for imagery where there is none.
**
I didn’t say it was random, I said it happened by unknown means.
The director is quite insistent in his commentary that Donnie is not schizophrenic. I think that’s a stupid thing for him to say since interpreting Donnie as a schizophrenic is perfectly consistent with the events of the movie, but apparently that wasn’t a part of the director’s artistic vision. Personally, I think if he didn’t want anyone to think Donnie was schizophrenic he should have made the movie differently rather than just telling people in the commentary that it isn’t so, but I’m crabby that way.
If Donnie is schizophrenic, then the majority of the movie takes place in his mind, in the few moments between the jet engine falling on his room and his death. It’s not impossible, but that’s a lot of hallucination for just a few moments.