Thoughts about this film? Was it actually an intelligent story or just a load of pap?
It was better than the sequel.
I didn’t see the theatrical version. I found the director’s cut rather intriguing, but that version had explanatory material the theatrical lacked, or so I’m told. Without that material, I’d have probably written it off as pretentious gibberish, since understanding much of anything about it would have been a lot harder than I think it would need to be (and I’ve enjoyed stuff like “Memento”, so I don’t insist on strictly linear story-telling and am comfortable with multiple possible interpretations of events).
Yup, the cut version missed the scene with Donnie in the class with his poem, and all the snippets from the book ‘a brief history of time’ but whatever sparrow. It made no sense at all.
Stylistically, it’s a good mix of the mundane and the fantastic. I’ve always thought ghost stories work best when placed in an environment I can relate to, so Donnie Darko certainly has that going for it.
This even goes for characterization: Donnie isn’t exactly nice, but his self-centered-ness is understandable given his age and background. He makes sense in the way a nicer person might not. He’s a juvenile and he acts juvenile sometimes, as opposed to the more common movie trope of being an adult who’s in high school for some reason.
But that juvenile attitude bleeds over into the movie itself to some extent, mainly when it tries to explain the time-travel and all the other fantastic elements. Tolkien could build a world entire unto itself and set his stories there. The people behind Donnie Darko could not.
I think it’s a good movie. I also think the director and writer had no idea what they were doing. If you watch any of the extras on the DVD, you’ll see they have this whole backstory about superheroes and comics or some such. None of this comes through in the film at all–and it’s a damn good thing because it’s really dumb backstory. The movie is actually better than the intentions of its creators apparently!
Which is a problem for me (one reason I gave up on “The Event” fairly early in the run). I hate writers/directors who are too busy playing “see what an ARTISTE I am?” to bother to tell a coherent story. Creativity with how you tell the story is fine, just let it be possible for a reasonably intelligent audience member to figure out what is going on.
Personally, I thought that the original version is far superior to the director’s cut, precisely because it doesn’t explain as much. It encourages you to try to fill in the blanks yourself (which is possible but quite difficult).
Also thought that the director tried to meddle too much in the directors’ cut. For instance, Echo and the Bunnymen’s Killing Moon > INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart (Kelly couldn’t get the rights from INXS for the original version - but didn’t have the good sense to realise that this stroke of seeming bad version gave him a serendipitous outcome that should have been left). There is something about the original version for me that works better, possibly due to cost constraints and time pressure, Kelly just had to get the film done. The more thought that went into it, the worse I think the film became - which is why I prefer the original, 21 days of shooting, minimal messing around, get it out version.
Agreed, although I went in prepared, knowing some of the reasons behind it. Thank god, because i never would have understood any of it. As it was, I rather liked it.
I thought it was good, not great, but I appreciate someone making a movie that was different that all the rest of the crap that’s out there, so I tend to grade on a curve for movies with a unique vision.
You misspelled crap, and it’s not even a full load.
I liked it. As others said, the less attempt there is to explain or figure out what’s going on, the better the movie is. The “explanations” were just stupid. But left as a mystery its a pretty cool movie.
I enjoyed it quite a bit… just a strange, often absurd little movie that didn’t always make sense but was consistently entertaining. YMMV, of course…
I was not the target audience - probably shouldn’t have watched it, but heard so much about it here I had to give it a try.
But when I see a movie I either want a lot of action or to come away feeling good. This one bored the piss out of me. In the end, I didn’t even care what happened or why.
I didn’t dislike it, or like it. I was too confused by it for a strong reaction. I think I understand what ‘happened’, but it was just…weird.
I will say it turned me on to the song Mad World (although it started seeing a lot of play shortly after anyway) so that was good. I love that song.
This is almost verbatim what I intended to write when I saw this thread.
I remember at the time I saw it (on DVD a year or two after the theatrical release) there was a lot of stuff on the Internet about how you needed to watch all the deleted scenes and other content on the DVD, go to the website, etc., to really get the full amazingness of this film, but doing this actually hurt my opinion of the movie and its creators. While I enjoyed the movie, I think most viewers could probably come up with a more satisfying backstory on their own.
A few years ago I happened to see the published screenplay, which included an interview with the writer/director, at the bookstore. IIRC, he said in the interview that people took the backstory a bit too seriously and that it hadn’t been intended as the official or only explanation for the events depicted in the film; he intended for it to be treated as basically equivalent to a fan-created backstory. While I suppose that’s an interesting idea, I feel it should have been obvious that a backstory created by the writer/director of the film would be given “Word of God” status and discourage other interpretations. And again, I also think that most fan-created backstories actually would have been better – or at least more consistent with the actual movie – than what he came up with.
I really liked it. I bought the DVD several years ago. I’ve only seen the Director’s Cut once and I completely agree with Cumbrian about “Never Tear Us Apart” being substituted for “The Killing Moon” The sequence with “The Killing Moon” is one of my favorite parts of the movie. Richard Kelly looks like a one-hit-wonder. Southland Tales was awful. I never saw The Box.
Loved it especially the original version. There were scenes that made the hairs on the back of neck stand up because they were so unexpected. The director’s cut had a lot of extraneous padding – skip it.
If the director’s cut finally clears up the big mystery of how exactly one can suck a fuck, then I am so there, people!
You’re not missing anything. Here’s what I wrote about The Box in a thread titled “Movies where they let the audience be confused” a few years ago:
The Box doesn’t bother explaining anything and in the end the whole movie boils down to the work of one of six groups: hyper advanced aliens, sentient lightning, government experimentation, magic, Cameron Diaz’s deformed foot or God (those last two might be the same thing).