The end of the world in the eyes of a teen weirdo

Rating: 8/10 (14 January 2020)

Yesterday I saw Donnie Darko again after several years, which when I was younger was one of my favourite movies. I saw it again by chance, and I was on the one hand enthusiastic and incredulous that I had almost removed it from my mind, and on the other curious to see it with new eyes, and to find out if I would still like it, or if I would find too obvious flaws that would make me reconsider in my cinematographic tastes. Well, it didn't.
I'm more specific: I'm perhaps partly tendentious , due to the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal in his version of a teenage wacko - who in the end is not a psychopath who kills innocent victims, but rather one who saves the world - , the trope of the weirdo, as well as the science fiction-philosophical theme, are elements, which, in any case, always have a certain charm on my imagination. But I can say that, beyond that, I still think Donnie Darko is a very good film.
Filmed in the very early 2000s, and set in the 1980s (before the revival for those years went crazy), it creates in my eyes a strange synthesis between the society of the 1980s represented in the election clash between Bush and Dukakis, but especially in the school and provincial environment where the story takes place, and that of a little more than a decade older, through whose lens the story is told, which is based on different scientific theories, reworking them in a creative way, adding dreamlike and fantastic elements, and telling it from the point of view of a teenager, thus bringing the science fiction genre closer to the teen movie genre, making an American teenager the medium for talking about the bigotry of American society and the pressing end of the world, which in a certain way is a consequence of the degeneration of this same society (and the fact that the film was released in 2001 is, seen in retrospect, almost disturbingly significant). Jake Gyllenhaal is very good at playing Donnie, and I'm not sure if it was this film that launched it, but if so, he's more than deserved it. The special effects used in the film are definitely 'dated' if you look at them now, but, at least for me, who's not a fan of spectacular special effects, they retain their charm, aesthetic and emotional, capable of supporting the narrative without overwhelming it. And how not to mention Frank, the creepy rabbit that accompanies Donnie, even if only to remember one of the cinematic creatures that have most imposed themselves in the collective imagination?
Donnie Darko became a cult in the 2000s, and now it's fallen a little into oblivion: I hope it won't stay there, because it still deserves to be watched and re-watched.