An impressive coming of age story

Rating: 8/10 (22 March 2005)

In my opinion there are two types of writing. Controlled Writing where the superego controls the pen. The other is where the imagination (the id) takes over. This was id writing. Uncontrolled, wild and chaotic.
In many instances this type of writing doesn't work - its energetic and vibrant, but without focus it just winds up a mess.
This film makes it work however for the following reasons.
This is the tale of a young man, a 'coming of age' story, and the story of most young men are tinged with wildness and chaos. Thus the premise and themes fit perfectly with the wildly imaginative way in which the story was told.
It speaks to young men in the way a good 'coming of age' story is meant to. Its rare, I can only think of a few films that do it well: Good will hunting, fight club, star wars and now donnie darko. I'm in my mid 20s and looking back, the fear, distress and sheer confusion of teenage life is always a brilliantly painful experience. But this distress (the movie fight club refers to it as the "great depression") is incredibly heightened in this film due to the sense of impending doom that Donnie feels throughout. Thus i ask you :
Is this not the way all of us were feeling post 9/11 ?
Its timing was perfect. A simple message powerfully expressed to me is the height of great writing. Everyone understands a simple point and everyone (no matter their education/literacy) can be moved by it.
Now here are the Cons:
OK so he stole the rabbit from alice in wonderland/the matrix and the time travel discussion is pretty juvenile, but then what talk amongst teenagers isn't? If they spoke like college professors
a) the characters don't seem like realistic teens
b) you lose your target audience
The director's cut honestly sucked major ass. It showed that the director is a little clueless about effective ways of film-making. they took out some of the great songs that made the original really gel and replaced them with a classical score in parts that clearly didn't work. Also some weird kiddy kaleidoscope images were thrown in that were a fake ass attempt to look like the closing images of 2001 a space odyssey. The directors cut was a travesty that should not have been allowed. An obvious attempt to make some quick cash based on this film being a huge hit at the video rentals arena (it didn't do any business on the screen 1st time around). I think the directors cut version should be burned.
But hes still young and allowed to make mistakes. As are we all. I'm looking forward to his future work. This film may be a "one hit wonder", or it might not. But no pun intended - only time will tell.