Donnie Darko

It’s a damn shame what production companies will do to keep movies from us. Anytime they think we aren’t smart enough to figure a movie out they’ll make the director change it, put it on the shelf for a while, deny its release for good or just bury its release. In the case of Donnie Darko they took the last road. The film was only released in three cities (New York, L.A. and Austin) and took a couple of awards at Sundance. Other than that I’ve talked to a lot of people who have never even heard of it. And they all live in a city that it was released it. Granted, it only lived for about a week in the theatres here, but our best theatre (Alamo Drafthouse) picked it up about a month before it hit video and it ran for about a month or so.

So, what’s it all about, you may ask. Well, that’s where the problem with promoting this film comes in. It’s so hard to describe that they had no idea what the hell to do with it, so they buried it. If it’s too hard, ignore it.

All it took me to want to see it was an “Anatomy Of A Scene” episode on IFC (I think). They showed a scene near the beginning of the movie where a lot of the characters are introduced set to “Head Over Heels” by Tears For Fears. It starts with a sideways shot of the back of a bus that Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal from October Sky and ~shudder~ Bubble Boy) steps out of. The shot follows him around the school yard and then follows different characters in fast, normal and slow motion in order to keep up with certain parts of the song that fit certain characters. It’s a truly amazing scene that showed me that the director (Richard Kelly) was going to be a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood.

And this is a Drew Barrymore movie!

But let’s start at the beginning of the movie. I don’t know if I’ll do justice to the plot, but I’ll try.

It’s 1988 and nobody understands Donnie Darko. He’s a truly disturbed young man, so that may be part of it. His teachers, his friends, his family…none of them really understand him. But a big factor in that is that he doesn’t really understand them. He goes to a psychologist (Katherine Ross from The Graduate and Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid), but she doesn’t even begin to understand what’s going on in his head. She can’t understand why he sleep-walks all the time or why he can’t seem to just be a normal kid.

Donnie’s life changes when the new English teacher, Miss Karyn Pomeroy (Drew–who pumped a lot of money into the film–good for her!), tells the new girl, Gretchen (Jena Malone–young Ellie from Contact and Stepmom) to sit next to the boy she thought was the cutest. Yes, against all logic, she chooses Donnie. And it’s weirdo love at first sit. (She’s a bit of a freak, too.)

And there are even more changes when a jet engine falls into Donnie’s room. Luckily he was out sleep-walking when it happened.

Meanwhile, the school is trying to get everyone to listen to a motivational speaker name Jim Cunningham with a dark secret.(His secret, of course, is that he’s played by PATRICK SWAYZE!!–But please don’t hold him against the movie. He doesn’t do too bad of a job.)

And did I mention the 6ft hell rabbit named Frank (James Duval from a lot of Gregg Araki’s travesties of film) who told him that the world was going to end within the month? Yeah, I didn’t think so. (This costume should have had a chance to be a HUGE hit for this Halloween. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone will pick up on it. Maybe I’ll go as Frank this year.)

As the movie goes on it goes from John Hughes-type comedy (the good ones from the 80s) to psychological thriller, to sci-fi, to “What the fuck was that?” freak flick. And it really takes either seeing it more than once or seeing it with someone who’s seen it more than once to fully understand everything that happens in it.

Let me tell you a few things about what you need to know to really understand it.

First off, the line that I quoted isn’t actually in the movie. It was originally in the scene where Donnie is talking to Miss Pomeroy about her getting fired. He asks what he should tell the kids when they ask about where she went. When Richard Kelly gave the script to Francis Ford Coppola to read (his nephew, Jason Schwartzman, was supposed to play Donnie) he told him that he had no idea what he was trying to say with it. Francis circled that line and handed it back to him saying, “That’s the whole point right there.”

And then he cut the scene down.

There’s a part where Gretchen says that Donnie’s name sounds like a superhero. He says something along the lines of “How do you know I’m not?” Apparently he is somewhat of a superhero, but most of that was cut, too. Or at least it wasn’t made very apparent in the film.

Most of the other stuff you need to just see for yourself in the deleted/extended scenes on the dvd (there’s 20!), but one warning. Don’t watch the last one. I can’t tell you what it was because it’ll give away the end of the movie (something I wouldn’t do for the world), but it’s a scene that the director didn’t want to film, and I totally understand why. It’s something that the audience doesn’t need or even want to see.

I will say this, though: Watch for a pretty blatant E.T. reference and a shot of someone reading Stephen King’s It near the beginning. There’s another reference towards the end that brings that one full circle. There are a lot of shots of scenery (and of kids popping up against that scenery) that are reminiscent of Stand By Me. And check out the movies that are playing as part of the “Frightmare” at the local theatre for Halloween.

Why is the movie so good? Well, besides being totally different from anything else, very well written, acted and directed and being totally absorbing and realistic (even though it deals with imaginary psycho rabbits and time-travel), it touches a nerve in all of us. Donnie may be totally fucked up, but he’s full of angst that all of us have had. Where can we find love? Why is our family crazy? Where are my friends when I need them? And why is it that the world seems to be against us?

All of the actors do a great job, but special props need to go to Jake Gyllenhaal for his portrayal of one of the darkest characters in a long, long time. He’s an all American private school kid, but he’s got so much fucked up stuff going on in his head and he has no idea why. He was pretty amazing. I also couldn’t help but notice how much he looks like Tobey Maguire here. Yeah, he may have been a pretty good Peter Parker, but he would probably have been too dark. But he would have been perfect for another dark “hero” of this summer: Anakin Skywalker. He’s got the menace and the creepiness that wasn’t necessarily missing from Hayden Christiansen, but could have been perfected with Jake in the role. And I don’t think that Jake would have been so whiny. I guess we’ll never know, though, since Lucas had to go with a pretty boy. (And I think we all know that Anakin’s hair could have darkened a LOT since he was 8. I would have accepted it.)

(Watch Donnie’s older sister, too. She’s played by Jake’s real sister, Maggie, from Homegrown, Cecil B. Demented and 40 Days And 40 Nights.)

What’s wrong with the movie? Well, it’s certainly not perfect, but it’s pretty damn close. The only problems that I can think of right now (it’s been a few days since I’ve seen it) are the fact that there’s just too much cut out and the fact that Donnie’s parents (Mary McDonnell–from Dances With Wolves and a bunch of John Sayles’ films–and Holmes Osborne from Election and Bring It On) are Republicans. That may seem like a weird complaint and it really isn’t because I’m a die-hard Democrat. It’s because they seem to be against everything that Republicans are for. Maybe that’s a conscious thing. I hope it is, but I can’t really figure out what it means except that, if they were for the things that Repubs are for we wouldn’t like them just like we don’t like one of Donnie’s other teachers who seems to hate literature.

And there’s a Martha Dumptruck type character named Cherita Chen (played by Jolene Purdy) who is constantly made fun of…usually by Donnie’s friends. (He does have them, although they don’t seem very close.) Why are they so mean to her? Because she’s fat? I don’t think so. That’s not what they make fun of. No, they make fun of her because she’s Chinese (which she doesn’t look until the very end). Is this necessary? Not really. It’s just kind of maybe a homage to those John Hughes flicks where Chinese people are stereotyped into oblivion…possibly. I don’t know. It didn’t really make a lot of sense to me and was just a little jarring to the tone of the film. Donnie defends her a little, but that didn’t really help.

This one of the great lost films of 2001. A lot of people said that there were no good movies in 2001, but I’m here to prove them wrong. Do something that 20th Century Fox didn’t seem to want you to do: rent Donnie Darko. I guarantee you, even if you don’t see what I saw in it, you won’t forget it. I still can’t stop thinking about it after a few days. It’s freaky, weird, funny, heartbreaking and just plain awesome.

And check out the soundtrack, too. The score is pretty awesome in its understatement, but the songs that are chosen are perfect. Echo & The Bunnymen, Tears For Fears, Joy Division, The Church, Duran Duran…and none of the songs that you think of immediately when you think of these bands. Gary Jules and Michael Andrews (who wrote the score) turn in an amazing cover of the Tears For Fears song “Mad World,” which is the only song with vocals on the album. That’s too bad, because it would be cool to have all of the other songs on there as well. I actually don’t have it, but I hear it’s short, but worth every penny.

Or, better yet, just buy the damn DVD. Believe me. It’s worth it.