Great portrayal of schizophrenia...

Rating: 9/10 (19 September 2007)

There are many ways to interpret Donnie Darko. Many seem to take this all very literally and it's SF/Fantasy film. Some find it pointless and too full of plot holes and things that can't be explained (the SF hardcore have explanations for these things...). To me, it is a view of what a functional psychologically challenged young man might see - and how everything is fits with his different internal logic and how beautiful that world can be. The non-standard associations that he makes are akin to what an artist (or for that matter, a good scientist) might make. This is really, really hard to do - most of the time it comes off as super-lame or at best forced art-house stuff but Donnie Darko brings it off and we are able to accept Donnie's magical world (props to Jake Gyllenhaal).
Sort of a magic psycho-realism (if you -like - get what I'm trying to say man...).
The hardcore SF people would probably say that is a cop-out explanation and normally I would agree - but not this time. If you know paranoid schizophrenics - you know and understand Donnie Darko...