Analysis of DD **SPOILERS**

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 2003)

CAUTION
**SPOILERS**
I think that Richard Kelly threw a hundred red herrings and a thousand ideas to us all at once but I have also developed several other theories. Not saying everything is wrong or right but I haven't found many comments that have actually helped me to understand the film better.

Donnie is in a tangent universe where he is guided by Frank and ultimately in the end he has the choice to continue by traveling through time or dying, and by doing so saving Gretchen, but not exposing the pedophile, so he is not necessarily doing what is right, but what he wants. When Gretchen dies Donnie realizes that as he has always said when you die you alone. He wasn't there holding Gretchen's hand. In death she is alone because at the time no one else is experiencing it with you and ultimately in the end Donnie dies alone, too. Grandma Death said that every living creature dies alone. Ultimately the 28 days, or end of the world, become the end of Donnie's world, where he is forced to make a choice of sacrifice. He chooses to allow Gretchen to live, Frank to survive, etc by sacrificing himself.
Everyone has a path and those are the liquid spheres protruding from everyone's chests and this is the key to the time travel. You have to change where the path is going in order to travel. Everyone's paths already exist but Donnie is chosen to decide for himself what his path will be. He is given life and death at the same time.
I think Donnie is laughing because in the end he realizes that death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a person. Being able to see your future changes it and Donnie sees his own future and escapes his death but in the end finds it to be inevitable.
Donnie is faced with tangent universes the future of what can be, which he lives, and the unknown with him dead. The tangent universes meet but eventually separate leaving Donnie with his ultimate choice. I don't think this film has a lot to do with God because the teacher said that he could get fired if he continued the conversation and being at a Catholic school and all God must be responsible. I don't really understand Frank, although he is the manipulated dead which is guiding Donnie. There are two parallel universes but eventually the paths meet and Donnie must decide what path he has to take.
I know all my ideas are jumbled but I have seen the movie twice now and new theories keep developing!