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Donnie Darko
***1/2
Cinema Releases - October 25, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
113 minutes. Written and directed by Richard Kelly. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal,
Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Daveigh Chase, Mary McDonnell, James Duval,
Arthur Taxier, Patrick Swayze, Beth Grant, Patience Cleveland, Drew Barrymore,
Noah Wyle.
I've seen "Donnie Darko" twice this
weekend. It's that kind of movie. You want to get your head around it. After
seeing it for the first time, I got back to my flat and wrote on my notepad:
"Amazing, spellbinding, confounding. Sometimes movies hold our attention
and make our heads spin without quite letting logic piece the reasons together
coherently. It's hard to put into words, but that's the challenge that made
me start reviewing movies."
What's the movie about? It's about a lot of things,
really. Teen angst and rebellion, and mental illness, and the confusion of
adolescence, and the lack of communication between the generations, and the
fact that you're either young and crazy or older and inane. And it's about
a giant bunny rabbit. And black holes. And the Smurfs.
The film takes place in the autumn of 1988, that
sad time in history when American citizens were getting ready to elect George
Bush. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Donnie, a creative teenager who has had 'emotional
problems', who is supposed to take pills prescribed by a psychiatrist and
who doesn't get along with his parents (at that age, who does?). One night
he's out sleepwalking, and before he gets back to his house to find that
an airplane propeller has fallen into his bedroom, he gets a visit from that
giant bunny rabbit, whose name is Frank. The creature has a message:
"Twenty-eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes, twelve seconds. That is
when the world will end."
Frank does not explain his premonition in any
more detail, but he revisits Donnie on certain nights, sending him on missions
that will wreak havoc and destruction upon the uptight adults in the community
and inspire our hero to be more vocal about the things he doesn't like in
daytime. "Donnie Darko" paints a world of kids who are confused, frustrated
and bored, and adults who adhere to self-help manuals, play golf with people
they don't like and refuse to employ teaching methods that consist of any
intelligence. "Do you even know who Graham Greene is?" asks someone at a
PTA meeting, after a gym teacher gets irate over the 'pornography' that is
the author's work. "I think we've all seen 'Bonanza'!" replies the teacher,
with smug grin.
"Why do you wear that bunny suit?" asks Donnie
of Frank. The response: "Why do you wear that man suit?" The exchange can
serve as a symbol of the gulf between the teens and adults; they have no
empathy, and their realities seem bizarre to each other. Somewhere in the
middle are two young teachers played by Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle; they're
technically part of the adult world, but they haven't lost their fire, and
are sympathetic to Donnie's queries about the literature he has been reading
and the time travel portals he sees coming out of people's
chests.
I am stepping carefully to avoid revealing the
movie's comic surprises, and it is a comedy -- one of small satirical details
about suburban adults, but also of flat-out eccentricity, like the twinkle
Gyllenhaal gets in his eye when the rabbit suggestively whispers, the old
lady called Grandma Death who spends her days walking around the mailbox
in a nightgown, the special-effects visualisations of Donnie's visions. It
all builds into one of those endings that double-backs on itself and leaves
people scratching their heads as they walk out of the cinema. And it is put
together in a style of dark, brooding photography and menacing rumbles, as
mystery, science fiction and teen drama are mixed with satire and farce,
on top of reflective scenes accompanied by such pop songs as "Head Over Heels"
by Tears for Fears and Duran Duran's "Notorious". Jeremy Heilman of
moviemartyr.com has the perfect description for the musical interludes, calling
them, "A delirious blend of nostalgia, detachment and pure filmmaking
gusto."
Watching "Donnie Darko" a second time reveals
imperfections. The movie's images are not quite as powerful as the act of
first discovering them, and the rhythm of the picture could use a little
tightening. Some of the performances are perhaps too multi-layered for their
own good: I was intrigued by the Mary McDonnell performance, for example,
which doesn't quite let us know whether Donnie's mother is drunk, sober,
liberal, conservative, caring or interfering. But ultimately, we're wasting
our time trying to figure her out, when the screenplay already has enough
for us to fixate on.
Still, this is a strong and original film, a deceptive
combination of all sorts of tones that seems like a stylistic jumble while
keeping up a restrained front and never resorting to easy hyperactivity.
"Donnie Darko" makes us laugh, freaks us out, moves us and gets us talking.
It is not perfect, but it is more than worthwhile.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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