Hamletian

Rating: 8/10 (1 May 2006)

Donnie Darko is a teen horror film. In addition, it's a teen romance. In addition, Donnie Darko is a Hamletian study in familial relationship. The viewer never really knows whether Donnie, a brilliant high school kid is wacko or completely sane while his adult world is nutty. I particularly liked the scenes with the lady-shrink where under hypnosis Donnie has a self-pleasuring moment. Things can go wrong in those shrink sessions for sure.
There are two groups of adults here, the Democrats and the Republicans. Dukakis is smart and thoughtful. Bush 1 is stammering and smarmy. The Physical Education teacher is new-age bunko, book burning, inflexible along with her idol, Patrick Swayze, as the handsome motivational speaker with one message, there's Fear and Love. To contrast, Drew Barrymore plays the really cool young English teacher that gets canned for being too Liberal. Donnie rebels and insists there is a world of grays out there, not black and white. Okay, this is relativism which has it's own critics. I'd go along with the evil Dan Quail idea if it were more developed, but good and evil in Darko is pretty cardboard.
I'm not at all sure why Kelly decided it was important to do a 1988 film in 2001. You got me on that one. There's as much political animosity and self-help gobblygook today as there was in the 80's. I can only assume that the 80's was a crucible for the director.
Finally, Darko is an incredibly creative film, very interesting to watch visually as things might fall out of the sky at any moment. Donnie walks through life in movie time, effortlessly burning down buildings while his girlfriend sleeps during a movie date. My teen dates were never like that.