Yes, yes. I know the cinema crowd was all aflutter about this movie, like, 50 years ago. I meant to see it, I really did. Somehow, I got it into my head that it was going to be more on the order of a straightforward kid-goes-bananas-and-kills-everybody splatter film, and I kept shuffling it to the bottom of my Netflix queue. Lord, how wrong I was. I actually just watched it a second time, because it occurred to me that there was quite a bit I missed the first time around (in terms of subtle cues, symbolism, foreshadowing, etc.)
In short, I was impressed. I loved the way it seemed that horrific calamity was always riiiiight around the corner, but when it came, it came in a way you didn’t really expect. Excellent suspense.
Thoughts and questions:
The whole framework of the movie seemed to me interpret spacetime in terms of quantum mechanics. In other words, “it is all one,” and spacetime can be manipulated more or less freely. There’s no such thing as a paradox, and the universe doesn’t care. Paths spring forth more or less infinitely from each choice.
I’m not entirely sure where Roberta Sparrow fit into the story, unless she sort of “closed the loop,” so to speak. She was the beginning of Donnie’s comprehension (or delusion) of what was going on, and she provided both the physical and metaphysical climax of the movie in the form of a) a place for everything to come to a head, and b) a way for Donnie to come to terms with his choice. She also seems to support the nonparadoxical nature of the universe, since she receives the letter, even though Donnie was ultimately killed by the jet engine, and thus never lived long enough to be led through all the chaos and horror of the leadup to Halloween by Frank, and thus never wrote the letter (at least, not in the first timeline.)
Yes, I realized that Frank was a Halloween costume fairly early on (they kinda beat you over the head with Oct. 31 as the “end of the world.” Thus, I thought I had the whole thing figured out. I was wrong.
Loved the music. Rare in-the-wild sightings of Joy Division, The Church, etc. It really helped to set a convincing late 80’s tone.
The humor in the movie really humanized it. I haven’t looked into this, but did Judd Apatow have anything to do with the writing? I spotted Seth Rogen in there, and the first time I viewed the movie, I had just watched the last disc of Freaks and Geeks. The slice-of-life high school drama of Donnie Darko was like a dark reflection of Freaks and Geeks. The similarities were striking at the time.
“Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!”
Drew Barrymore’s character - how was she important? Was she thematically important in any other way than to provide a way to get “cellar door” in the story? Also, fairly unconvincing as a high intellectual.
Noah Wyle - quite convincing. I liked the short “wormhole” conversations with Donnie. They really summarized the entire plot of the movie in a couple of economical exchanges.
What was the nature of the “liquid souls” that Donnie perceived? Were they simply another visual manifestation of his psychosis, or did they have some metaphysical meaning? Were they future selves? Individual timelines? Were they manifestaions of wormholes?
Patrick Swayze’s character was utterly irredeemable…which means, of course, that Swayze played it perfectly. The only flash of humanity we see from him in the whole movie is the montage in the end, where he is seen crying, presumably over the fact that he is lost in his uncontrollable urges. At least in the timeline that was changed, his child porn collection was outed, and Donnie had given him at least a chance to reclaim his humanity, even if it would be a hard, horrific path.
The smug, self-righteous book banning teacher - oddly, in some ways, she was my favorite character, even though I despised her. She was just portrayed so skillfully. And she had a moment of utter clarity and wisdom in the confrontation with Donnie’s mother at the school (“I-I-I just don’t know if Donnie can be saved before he succumbs to the path of fear!”) And even though she was thinking in terms of Cunningham’s self-help bullshit, that thought was utterly appropriate and fitting to Donnie’s situation. And she delivered it with that apocalyptic, Baptist-preacher manner. Very effective.
Cherita Chen - I’m a little confused about her. Obviously, her life was pure, unrelenting hell. She had a crush on Donnie, but I’m a little confused about the significance of that fact. Maybe she was supposed to be the “rest of us,” a character whose destiny must be realized the old-fashioned way, by time and pain and experience, and not by some quantum shortcut. Big question mark.
I liked that Donnie’s bike was the only one in the leadup to the climax that did not have a headlight, and he was leading. Clever, subtle little piece of setting.
“I’m going home.” It cropped up several times in the movie. What was its significance?
Actually, one more question: how did Frank become a time traveler? Or did he? He was obviously dead when he appeared to Donnie, sice he had already been shot through the eye.
“Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?”
“Why do you wear that stupid man suit?”
Did you watch the director’s cut or the theatrical release version? The director’s cut adds some context, though not specifically in relation to any of the points you mention, as far I recall. I need to rewatch it; it’s been awhile. And I agree with your assessment of the smug teacher: she is terrific in her awfulness. She has some of the best lines, IMHO.
Also: oh, and after watching the director’s cut, I’m convinced that Donnie is supposed to be somewhat of a Christ savior/martyr-type character. Hmm…thinking aloud…Could it maybe be about everyone’s potential to go back and be Christ if time-travel were possible? Or that time is all one and we’re all Christ in a way and responsible for the salvation of all humanity? Definitely time to rewatch.
Thank you! And I agree with Miller in that thread. The primary/alternate universe interpretation sounds like a badly dumbed-down version of what I was saying upthread about spacetime being all one thing. Noah Wyle even said as much in the movie when he was discussing Einstein-Rosen bridges.
Well, sure, I think there was quite a bit of religion in the movie. I can see the self-sacrificing martyr angle, but even though our primary referent for that trope is Jesus Christ, it really appears in all sorts of contexts in world mythology. It’s older than Jesus.
I bought the DVD a while ago, and got around to watching it only a couple of weekends ago. I’m quite sure I didn’t get all the nuance in one watching. I’ll watch it again in a while, I’m sure I’ll see all kinds of stuff I missed the first time.
I had some idea what to expect from the previous SDBM threads.
The director’s cut makes some of the director’s intentions clearer from the theatrical release, so in that sense it’s worth a watch, but it’s definitely a worse movie. I don’t know why (for one thing) he decided to change the sound track as radically as he did. Tears for Fears was quintessential to several parts, and whatever the hell they were replaced with (been awhile since I saw the DC) didn’t work nearly as well.
I was late too. I just watched this movie for the first time about two weeks ago. Let me be the first to admit I was like “WTF?”
It was compellingly filmed, and the actors were great, the suspense great – until (for me) the last part, starting about when Donnie drives up on the hilltop to watch the vortex. I really wished the movie had ended right after the…
[open spoilers, right?]
…tragic incident outside Ms. Sparrow’s home. A long shot of the run-over body and then credits rolling would have suited me just fine. But I was intrigued enough about the ending (that I didn’t like) to wander out on the Internet and find a site claiming to have ‘transcribed’ the directors commentary from the directors cut DVD.
If that info is correct, then the movie sucks. How in the world was the viewer supposed to figure any of that shit out??? And even if you did, it was pointless. I’ve never been so conflicted about my opinion of a movie ever before. According to this ‘transcript’; essentially these future manipulators (can’t remember what the director called them) went to all this effort to put Donnie back into his bed, where…wait for it…he would have been at the start of the movie, except that these future manipulators, manipulated him out of the bed in the first place. Huh?
I wish I’d never read that page, and could just go: “Donnie Darko, it was a compelling movie, I understand now why it has such a cult following. Too bad the ending was lame.”
I’m braced, give it to me. I know I must have stepped on someone’s pet with that post.
I’m with you, except that, in my interpretation of the movie and its philosophical treatment of the nature of spacetime (please note that by this, I mean, how the movie should have treated spacetime - that primary/alternate universe claptrap is stoopid,) that sort of cause and effect is meaningless.
In other words, like I said in my original post, every choice sprouts an infinite number of timelines, and there’s no such thing as paradox. What you’re arguing is a very relativistic cause-and-effect universe. There is one timeline, and we can’t affect one thing in the past or future without the ripples of that action impacting the rest of the timeline (IOW, paradox.) It’s the old idea of “is it possible to go back in time and kill my own grandfather before he sires my father?” In a relativistic view, no it is not. Such an action would negate your father’s existence, and therefore your own, so that you would no longer exist to be able to go back in time to kill your GF. Closed loop paradox.
In the more “quantum” view, spacetime is all one. Choices merely “activate” one out of an infinite palette of potential timelines. Every timeline, however, is equally valid, and the universe doesn’t really care about whether you’re doing things that may appear, on a 3-dimensional scale, to be paradoxical or self cancelling. It may simply be a “different you” that’s doing these things (or another aspect of the multidimensional “you”), and there’s no real problem that arises from multiple paths being “activated” in our 3D little piece of the universe.
That’s the idea I wish they’d spent more time developing: that out of all these paths, there are a small number of what Donnie referred to as “God’s Paths” - those timelines which result in the greatest possible good for everyone, and because activating these paths requires a very great and selfless act, the Sacrifice literally saves the universe (or the one we know) by giving himself over to death.
*Edit: so who wants to get stoned and pointlessly navel-gaze with me?
