'I'm afraid that you'll tell me that this is not a work of fiction'

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2006)

It is without doubt a thought-provoking, moving and beautiful film within the confines of its surreal obscurity. I think I'm quite certain of the impossibility of understanding it or being satisfied with one viewing, it deliberately doesn't point to the clues which help you piece it together, and only once you know how it pieces together can you go back to search for the clues- a skillfully carved puzzle that leaves you unsure whether it can all be pieced together at all.
The film almost serves as an extra-worldly experience for the introspective viewer; it will raise deep questions about the reality you live in with its potent cinematography, music and screen writing. It does all this whilst simultaneously entertaining you with a humorous political and social satire of the Reagan era.
Donnie is the classical epic hero placed in a modern setting, displaying his heroism in a highly unconventional scenario, which makes the film all the more noble and tragic, as not only will no one ever know what he does and what sacrifices he makes, but he will forever be remembered, officially, as a merely troubled, psychotic teenage vandal.
This heroic aspect of Donnie's character is summarised by a poem Donnie reads out in class one day, which analogises his heroic persona with that of a more traditional hero who "will deliver the children back to their doorsteps / And send the monsters back to the underground / I'll send them back to a place where no-one else can see them / Except for me / Because I am Donnie Darko" Incorporating ideas of parallel universes, time travel (in the Stephen Hawking sense) and manifest individual destinies, the story singles out Donnie by following his visible and pre-written destiny as he plays his role in preserving the universe. Branded a paranoid schizophrenic by the outside world, we the viewers know his so-called hallucinations are more than just the mind games of mind altering neuro-chemicals. And in this way, as well as many other ways, the film softens conventionally solid boundaries of the universe and our understanding of it in more than a grossly fantastical Stephen King fashion. A far cry from the light-hearted Hollywood comedy and cheery 'chick flick', this is not viewing for the faint-hearted.