The Dreams In Which I'm Dying Are The Best I've Ever Had

Rating: 7/10 (4 June 2009)

Donnie Darko is a high school kid with behavioural problems; sleepwalking, pyromania, depression, antisocial tendencies. He starts having visions of a creepy guy in a dark rabbit suit called Frank, who tells him to do things and warns that something significant is going to happen soon. Is Donnie finally losing his marbles ?
This movie achieves the near impossible - it's an original modern-day teenage angst film. In a genre that's been done a million ways twice, it skilfully blends together elements of youth rebellion, small town exposé and temporal paradox sci-fi stories into a unique and compelling drama. Better than that, it expertly forces us to identify with Donnie and see the fractured world through his perceptive eyes, and it has a terrific payoff that makes you want to watch the film over in order to understand it better. It's pretty weird in the absorbing way that David Lynch's films are, but unlike those it never feels surreal or arty. Kelly has a great bag of tricks full of clever surprises, but doesn't compromise on the drama of Donnie's situation and his movie is rich, funny, sad, thoughtful and intriguing. Gyllenhaal is terrific in the lead, never overacting but making us feel Donnie's confusion and insecurities so we can't help but empathise. The support cast is good, particularly McDonnell as the mom, and Barrymore, whose Flower Films company helped to finance the picture. It also has a commendable eighties drum machine song score, notably the Joy Division classic Love Will Tear Us Apart (very apt to the storyline) and a wonderfully fragile version of Tears For Fears' Mad World, performed by Gary Jules and composer Michael Andrews. The photography by Steven Poster is quite beautiful, as he uses subtly altered speeds through the frame (a much copied technique since) to echo Donnie's out of kilter abstract view of his small town world. A word about why I hate establishment film critics; this is a very interesting and laudable movie, but because it doesn't fit easily into a niche it was treated very badly by both the movie distribution business and the media, with the result that the extremely talented Kelly has struggled to find any funding for future films. Speak to any real people who've seen it though, and they're entranced. This was perhaps the most imaginative film of 2001, and yet critics would have you believe it was Gosford Park or A Beautiful Mind - spare me. So listen up kids; ignore those backhander-grabbing senile scribblers, and check out this puzzling, rewarding, deftly constructed little teenage-boy-goes-nutso drama instead.