I considered that, and believe it or not I even drew a fairly similar diagram on a napkin while trying to explain my understanding of the film and my logical problems with it to a friend! But while this explanation almost works, I still see a flaw:
The tangent universe had to split off before the engine hit the house. Otherwise there couldn’t be a world where Donnie is killed in bed and another where he’s safely outside at the same point in time.
There is a far simpler (sort of) explanation that doesn’t require the “Philosophy of …” book, and uses common sci-fi storytelling techniques. BTW, it would be nicer if this was just a Spoiler thread.
I’ve got to make this quick so I apologize for any mistakes…
Time travel is a paradox, and there is no “reality” to any explanation of it. Different writers make different choices about how time travel would work.
How can the engine be in two places at once? Easy. I can create an infinite number of engines. Send an engine 100 seconds into the past. Now send the same engine 99 seconds into the past. In the past, there are two engines, so I now have both of them. Now send both engines 98 seconds into the past. Okay, we’ve got four engines, etc. Sending all the engines back every second will give me 1267650600228229401496703205376 engines after 100 seconds.
And no, I DON’T need to send them all back. According to Einstein, time-travel is impossible because it creates paradoxes. It is a fictional concept, so a writer can do anything he wants with it. Sometimes the universe is unchangeable and everything plays out the way it has to. Sometimes parallel universes are created. Sometimes you can only leap back in time into someone else’s body. No one knows what would really happen (if time travel is possible at all). That’s why time travel is used as a storytelling concept by everything from Star Trek to Harry Potter to Stephen King. One can be completely creative with it.
In Donnie Darko, the engine doesn’t come from any plane that flies in “the real world”. The plane carrying the Sparkle Motion lady will not necessarily crash. The engine was created out of nothing, and comes out of nowhere. In truth, it was pulled from a parallel universe which no longer exists.
Confusing? Yes. Impossible? No. It’s time travel fiction. That’s just the way it works.
As for Gretchin…
The safe place she goes is to the grieving home of the Darkos. Even though she never met Donnie, the mother still recognizes here… from somewhere. Patrick Swayze cries. The events that occur in the parallel universe send a shockwave of emotion through the real world. It’s completely likely that Gretchin runs crying to the Darko house and is taken in by the mother.
Ddi you come up with all that, find it disquieting and unsatisfying, and still wonder why Roberta Sparrow dropped out of the nunnery? The whole point is that there is no satisfying explanation - and if you think about it too long, you go nuts.
I do not find this “completely likely”. I don’t even find it vaguely plausible.
If I were a teenaged girl in fear for my life I wouldn’t run to some house I’d passed by once a month ago when it was the scene of a horrible accident, even if I thought I kind of recognized the lady who lived there. I could more readily believe that Gretchen’s mother’s disappearance was part of the whole tangent universe/Manipulated Living thing and wasn’t going to happen in the “real world” anyway. However, there is nothing to even hint at this (or any other indication of what will happen to Gretchen) in the movie or in any of the supplementary materials I saw.
Nope.
I am not so psychologically fragile that a poorly thought out backstory in a movie is going to drive me mad. But Richard Kelly spent a heck of a lot of time and effort making his explanation in the supplementary materials to the film for someone who’s “whole point is that there is no satisfying explanation”. He obviously thinks there is a satisfying explanation and that he has it. I think he’s wrong on that point, and that he’d have done better to keep the contents of “The Philosophy of Time Travel” to himself.
I’ve watched my DVD of the movie many times, but I don’t think too hard about it anymore. Just dig the music and the late 80s period piece ambience.
I kept wondering when the drool would start flowing.
Way to miss the point, Lamia. I thought I’d made it obvious that I was talking about how you would feel if you were actually in that situation when I started talking about what happened to fictional characters.
Wow. MOst of you are way off, arguing comPLEETly beside the point.
It’s OK not to get it. In the first place. It’s a wild ride that leaves you wondering; that’s the point.
In the second place, once you accept time travel as a possibility you give up all rights to insist on a logical plot. That should be clear to anyone. Time travel isn’t science fiction; it’s fantasy. In a time travel storyline, all bets are off.
Well in that case, it was a very unsatisfying ending. If you can just make up a new rule to answer all the questions a story presents, isn’t that Deus Ex Machina or something? It’s like modifying the tricorder to deflect the tachyon particles, and then suddenly everything’s okay again.
Way to make an incomprehensible point, Evil Death.
*So you think the point of the movie is that we’re all supposed to imagine we’re in this impossible situation without the benefit of Richard Kelly’s explanation of his half-baked backstory? You could have just said that, you know.
Not that it’s any better of an argument, because if that’s the whole point of the movie then why did he make the explanation? You’re free to read the movie any way you like, and this is a movie that benefits from alternate viewer interpretations, but don’t pretend like you’ve got special insight into the intended message when Kelly’s own actions contradict your theory. He thinks there’s a satisfying explanation and that he’s made it. (The end of the movie also suggests that Donnie found a satisfying explanation in the form of the “Philosophy of Time Travel” book.) Kelly has even discouraged alternate interpretations that vary too much from his vision, like taking the film as the story of Donnie’s descent into madness rather than a science-fiction tale.
Yeah, it is an unsatisfying ending. When I was drawing that diagram on the napkin for my friend, I had to conclude by saying something like “The only thing that doesn’t work is how the engine could be here and here at the same time. I guess in this movie world we don’t know that things can’t be in two places at once, but we’re not given any other sign that they can either.”
This wouldn’t be such a problem if Kelly hadn’t insisted on laying out his whole tangent universe backstory. Oddly, I think he made a better movie than he understood that he was making. As a movie in and of itself I think Donnie Darko is quite enjoyable, but Kelly’s backstory is second-rate sci-fi garbage. I’m fine with “things occur that we cannot explain”, I am not so fine with “things occur that appear to have no explanation, but you can find out what the explanation is in the bonus features on the DVD, only it’s not actually a very good explanation.” He should have left the movie to stand on its own two feet rather than attempting to tell everyone what it “really” means.
Wasn’t the plane engine just temporally dislocated in a wormhole?Suspended or transported under the time conditions of the tornado/wormhole but everexistent, its end conditions independent of timeline X… a preexisting event in stasis and fatebound regardless?
Personally, I loved the movie, the old fate and second chances storyline but reversed. The anti-It’s a Wonderful Life. I love any time travel movie on principle alone but I thought Darko was particularly well-crafted and acted. Great story-Great Movie IMHO.
O.K?
That was clear to me when I watched the director’s commentary. It reminded of the old adage about the poem often being smarter than the poet.
The commentary was gobbledygook. The movie was wonderful, in spite of what the director thought he had intended.
The part I thought was especially strange was the reason he gave for being so upset about having to cut a short scene with the psychiatrist from the original theatrical release. (It’s been restored in the director’s cut.) The doctor reveals that
Donnie’s schizophrenia meds were a placebo all along
and he apparently meant this to make it clear to the audience that Donnie wasn’t crazy. If anything, it suggests just the opposite to me.
I can see why so many talented actors were attracted to this risky, low-budget project on the strength of its script, but I have to wonder if they were also treated to Kelly’s explanation of the “logic” behind the story.
I have to partially agree with Jack Batty’s interpretation.
However, I also feel that people are trying too hard to interpret the movie and expect a neatly wrapped-up story.
Not to compare this movie to any work of David Lynch, but I think you need to turn your logic off a bit, to really appreciate this film.
BTW: I also felt the director had no clue about the movie when talking in the Director’s commentary.
I had to switch it off, because it made my brain hurt.
I didn’t like it. I haven’t seen the Director’s Cut, but don’t really feel compelled to, either. After the movie ended I felt kind of glum & nauseous.
I think I understood the dual story lines/time sequences, but when it was all said & done I thought, “Ehh…some kid’s freakish head trip. Better to not waste too much time trying to find sense in it.” Sure to be seen as “deep” by some people & become a cult classic. But all in all, I found Donnie Darko to be macabre & dull.
Lamia,
It happens quite often with art that the product is much better than the creator intended or could have created by himself. I have no intention of starting a Star Wars bashing thread, so I’ll give a single example: Midichlorians. George Lucas decided to give “The Force” a sci-fi backstory. He added the “midichlorians” to give some sort of scientific/logical explanation to how The Force works. There are several sites on the net that go into great detail to show all the ways in which that backstory falls apart. Does it then lower your enjoyment of the original trilogy to know that backstory exists?
What if papers were uncovered that showed the One Ring to be a piece of hypertechnology from the Ninth Age of the Earth, that communicates with Sauron via radio waves? All they would have to do is lock the Ring in a Faraday cage and it would have no effect on anyone… Why should the intentions of the creator matter at all?
It just seems a bit mean-spirited to attack a movie based on director’s comments and DVD special features, when the OP has just seen the movie in a theater.
I’m glad to see I’m not alone in being confused and mildly annoyed by this movie (at first, I’ve warmed to it a bit). My friend absolutely loves this movie and I could see the sheer disappointment, anger and disgust on her face when she realized I did not share her opinion. I thought maybe I’d missed something crucial, but apparently not.
And Lamia, take a deep breath, you’re sounding like a certain recently banned member. Repeat after me: its just a movie. I kinda like it that the story loops but isn’t necessarily all pat and nice and tied with a ribbon. Its not a requirement that all things must be explained in movies, especially movies with sci-fi/occult plot twists.
I haven’t attacked the movie. I’ve said repeatedly that I thought it was a good movie, that I enjoyed it, and that I thought it stood on its own merits. I’ve criticized the director and his half-baked backstory, and I have done that precisely because I think they do the movie a disservice.
I am genuinely curious as to why you think I am at all upset about this.
*Yes, I know. I have also said repeatedly that I am fine with things being unexplained in a movie. It’s Kelly’s attempts to explain his movie that I think failed. He apparently does not know that all things don’t need to be explained.
Honestly, and not to be too non sequitur, I enjoyed the confusion I had at the end of Donnie Darko a ton more than I enjoyed the total letdown of the frogs at the end of Magnolias. I mean, if I’m going to be left hanging by a movie, and not given a neatly-wrapped package that all makes sence as a whole, I’d much prefer a sci-fi conundrum about time travel that I can try to unwrap and decipher than a bunch of frogs falling from the sky that don’t mean shit.
I haven’t seen the director’s cut, but I’m looking forward to it. The interview I heard in NPR/Fresh Air got me excited that there would be more of the “superhero/comic book” element to the story, which is cool.