Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko: **

Given that Butterfly Effect, 21 Grams, Minority Report, Eternal Sunshine… and their ilk are the stuff I can't get enough of, the supposedly daddy of this surrealistic sci-fi-philosophy genre called Donnie Darko had surprisingly eluded my DVD player. Not anymore. Fresh from the viewing of the director's cut this weekend, I have to say that it left me sorely disappointed and nonplussed with an absolutely incoherent and cryptic-to-the-point-of-suicide screenplay.

A disturbed adolescent sleepwalking one night in the winter of 1988 meets a 6-feet-tall demonic bunny and is told that the world is going to end within 28 days. The next morning, he goes back home to find a jet-engine crashed into his bedroom, followed by him sleepwalking again the next night, then a school flood the very next morning, then a fire at the local inspirational speaker-cum-paedophile's home some days later, all of which are committed by Donnie either while he's sleepwalking or in daytime– with the sole "plan" to finally lead his mother and sister to board the very same jet whose engine had ripped at the start of the movie (through a wormhole or time-storm). Yes, you can either shrug it off as the bizzarest thing you would have seen uptil the end where *spoilers ensue* the same engine crashes into Donnie's bedroom with Donnie IN the room, killing him in the process. So what was all that you saw uptil now? In director's and script-writer's words it was a piece of the Tangent Universe and just so that this Tangent Universe doesn't play more havoc in the Primary Universe, Donnie has to go about doing the things he does to bring order back to the Primary Universe. To understand all of this and more, you have to sit through a director's commentary and/or a google search for a fictional pseudo-scientophilosophy book called The Philosophy of Time Travel–luxuries best reserved for the weekend. And yes, after much reading and listening, pieces of jigsaw puzzle do come together, but for me they were never quite enough to solve some of the inherent paradoxes (read plot holes) that are just left unexplained.

The time-split or the Tangent Universe corruption that actually causes the jet engine to barge from the future still does crash after 28 days of Donnie's hard-work to save the world into entering a black hole. All that work, just to save one or two individuals?!? Or does he know he's going to die at all? And was that some twisted form of telekinesis where Donnie creates a wormhole? For me, it just doesn't pay off. And plus there's a whole barrage of self-contradicting set of theories in the fictional book which the screenplay obeys page after page after page. So after all the head-spinning detail, ultimately the space-time corruption that the film tries valiantly to give a slice of, becomes more convoluted for its own good. Quite a pity when films like Being John Malkovich (more of person travel than time) and Butterfly Effect achieved all that Donnie Darko attempts to with far more identifiable and memorable characters, crackling dialogues, coherent structures–and they delivered it all with such a sure, confident and profound hand that DD can only dream of.

Still I'd like to thank the movie-makers for helping me read more on the concept of time (I have, indeed spent so much time and effort on the content that characters and actors are a distant fuzz) and yes, for changing my belief about Jake Gyllenhall being an absolutely uni-directional actor. Inspite of the convolutions and the distractions of the plot, his Donnie Darko has his moments–particularly when he's at his brainiest and practical best and gives a sermon to the phony motivational speaker or when he doesn't see the point of sympathising with a rabbit's demise in Watership Down in his English lesson or even when he has a conversation with his physics teacher on whether free-will and choice really do exist–Gyllenhall really brings forth the angst, the confusion and a wisened edge of his otherwise "classified as schizo" character laudably.

However, the point I really want to make is that Donnie Darko just isn't the sort of film I'll sit through again. Simply because I don't see how meritorious the director/screenplay-writer's talents are if his viewers have to sit through hours of commentary and read a fictional work before trying to make sense of it all. I have seen much more profound and thought-provoking ideas being brought across the screen in a way that never compelled me to go through the director's commentaries and look for supporting material etc. I guess its a trap that every science fiction film or series that takes itself too seriously, fall into. In a genre where there's no end to creating layers and layers of theories within stories, Donnie Darko is just too overwhelmingly ambitious in what it wants to say. Nothing wrong with that–just that because it  skims through the multitude of complex ideas in 2 hours, it ends up being quite hollow as neither the characters get any space to breathe (stifled by the plot) nor any solid message filters through. If this is of any consolation for any reader who swears by DD, its only a patch on the fiasco that Matrix ended up being.

Worth a watch to form an opinion on, now that its a contemporary cult classic.