A deep and emotional story about a sane man troubled by his gifted insight into his world

Rating: 10/10 (9 March 2004)

Just a small part of what I thought about it:
Donnie sees the world around him differently to everyone else. He is not wrong or misguided about what he sees and how he experiences it, just different. I think he sees the complexity and is unable to summarize people and attitudes into neat reduced packages. To illustrate this - there is one scene where one of his 'teachers' tells him to choose where on a simple scale ranging from 'fear' to 'Love' a simple story falls. Everyone in the class has a different story to 'interpret'. Donnie's story is about someone who finds a wallet, returns it, but keeps the money found inside. Donnie cannot place the story on the scale - he refuses reduce the story to the simplicity required. Another point about that scene is that there are people (not least the teacher) who are willing and able to make such a reduction.
Anyway, a profound and emotional film.