The Effect of the use of light in Donnie Darko by Joshua, Job, Michael and Coen

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2011)

In the surrealistic psychological thriller, main character Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) seems to be mentally disturbs already from the first moments of the movie. He has an imaginative friend, Frank. Frank tells him the World will be coming to an end. Frank makes Donnie do extreme things, from flooding the school, to destroying people lives so that Donnie will sacrifice him self and let himself get killed by the airplane motor. This will so called save all the people around him. You can tell by the story that light is going to play a key role in the movie. It is a dark, almost sad movie. Donnie Darko is a perfect example of how light can and should be used in movies. Light plays a great part in the movie and it is clearly visible and really well done, considering the low budget they had to work with.
One of the most clearly visible techniques of using light in the movie is when Donnie is looking in the mirror at himself or at the bunny. They used three point lighting in theses scenes. In these scenes the three point lighting is used to illuminate the bottom half of his face from the bottom. It is almost as if someone is standing with a torch underneath which people do when they are telling a spooky story. They illuminate the bottom half of his face so that his eyes are not very visible. This makes him look a bit creepy, dark and a bit mysterious. They also positioned the lights in such a way so that the door behind him is illuminated. This makes the shadows on Donnie's face even more visible because it is seen against a lighter background making Donnie seem even more dark and creepy. Another thing that the makers did was illuminate the rabbit's face in the reflection of the mirror, especially his eyes. This had a really big effect in the movie. Every time the angle of the camera is switched ,the rabbit would all of a sudden appear in the reflection in the mirror. This can be frightening the first couple of times, because you do not expect it and the rabbit is brighter and more visible than expected. You do not expect this while watching the movie, because it is a very mysterious movie and Donnie is a very closed person so you do not expect to all of a sudden see the whole face in such detail. This is even more so in the scene set in the cinema since the rabbit is completely glowing and the eyes are shining.
So light does play a big role in the movie Donnie Darko and it would not be the same good movie if the light-effects wouldn't have been used so well. It creates an atmosphere and makes you focus on the important details in the movie such as the rabbit head. The effect of the light can make you feel unconformable or curious during the movie so that you are always on the edge of your seat not expecting or knowing but wanting to know what is going to happen next. This is probably the reason why Donnie Darko was such a big success.
We personally thought Donnie Darko was a very grabbing and interesting movie. The psychological problems and odd actions of Donnie kept us in a trance till the end of the movie. There were some shocking moments in the movie that made it a very exciting, and sometimes even scary movie. The acting was done so incredibly well, that however unrealistic the movie seemed, it still felt like it could happen to us any moment. Another outstanding element of the movie was that it was really difficult to understand, especially for us 16-year old students. All the odd things that happen made it difficult to follow and keep up. It wasn't until we looked it up on Internet, that we knew what it was all about. In our opinion, this is a very clever technique the writer uses, but a little bit too difficult, mainly for us younger people. Although the movie was a low-budget movie, because it was Kelly's first movie. It was extremely well filmed making good use of outside areas and common sub-urban areas, so that there was not a lot of need of big film sets, again making it feel more realistic. Also the cast existed of actors that had just started their career, however, and I cant express this enough, the acting was brilliantly done. All with all, the movie had a great impact on us, and we will remember it for a long time, and we will never forget, that not everything is what it seems to be.