don't miss Donnie Darko - it's a treasure

Rating: Null/10 (25 July 2004)

( SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS AHEAD ! ! ! ! SEE IT FIRST AND THEN READ THIS - DON'T LET ME RUIN IT FOR YOU ! ! ! ! !) It's Sunday night in New York and I just walked home from a dazed viewing of the new Director's Cut of Donnie Darko. I taught a film class last year and showed my class the original version - not for content but for more formal filmic elements like the outrageously flawless tracking sequences through the school, the Dawn of the Dead/Sparkle Motion/burning of Patrick Swayze's kiddie porn den, the exceptionally moving Mad World finale - as well as the brilliant editing of sentimental 80's songs and vivid new music. I left this new viewing with an even more intense admiration for the film. The first viewings left me giddy with structural appreciation, and with a great nod toward the performances and the direction, but the new cut fleshed out many of the more obtuse plot points. The original left the viewer with too many questions, I felt - too many unknowns. I always appreciate the opportunity to be left to my own convictions and to draw conclusions myself but I felt that this original film was too opaque. The director creates a world that is so accessible - so vivid - so familiar ( I'm a 35-year-old white man so I say that with all presumptuousness fully acknowledged) that you absolutely expect an explanation - it's a linear film with a clear narrative - it needs an ending. With the new cut - Roberta Sparrow's chapter openings and more fully developed relationships in the Darko family - the questions were answered in a perfect and satisfying way. I interpret the end to mean that Donnie is a paranoid schizophrenic, unmedicated and poorly monitored, who inappropriately interprets arbitrary daily events as seizmic prophetic moments. Paranoid Schizophrenia strikes in late teens/early twenties and he experiences the typical symptoms. He's in a spiral toward madness and along that journey he contemplates God and Fate in an unselfconscious exploration of his suburban existence. Most of the other characters are plastic 2-dimensional people that he experiences as exaggerated caricatures of themselves. None of them (the gym teacher, the bully, Patrick Swayze - could possibly be as simple as he's imagined them - they're necessarily playing the roles that, in his mind, represent various impossible barriers to his own peace.) The time-travel almost feels like a necessary conceit to make the narrative plausible. But it's a film about madness - and one boy's journey there. Jake Gyllenhal has probably given the performance of his career, at whatever tender age he inhabits. It's this kind of film that destroys careers. He will be forever indelibly stuck in the viewer's mind as Donnie Darko. I, for one, will never see him differently. It's like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror (not to compare the films - there is nothing to compare) but he has fashioned a character that is so rich in his delivery that I don't know how he'll ever escape. But he should be proud of his achievement - this film transcends Hollywood and offers a glimpse of greatness. I am honored to have experienced its wealth of humanity and the naked horror potentially therein.