An imperfect favorite.

Rating: 9/10 (28 August 2017)

Donnie Darko is my 5th favorite movie. It is likely the movie I have watched the most. Yet, I do, in fact find it to be notably imperfect.
I'll talk about positives first.
The acting and writing of characters is the most unusually human of perhaps any movie I've ever seen. Legitimate humanity and natural actions can be something very rare in sci-fi, and lets be honest, a lot of movies, so it feels very refreshing. The character of Donnie's mom particularly stands out as having the most believable reactions to events of the plot. For example, the scene in which Donnie murmurs "Bitch" as she closes the door: She hears what he said, stops, makes a small debate about going back into the room, but ultimately ends up letting it be, only to talk to her husband about it. Donnie, additionally, has a great reaction in this scene, acting brave in the heat of the moment, but immediately looking back at the door obviously nervous about the chances of his mother coming back through the door. These, to me, are very seemingly real and believable actions by all members, and are very refreshing in the genre. Other fantastic examples involving the writing/acting of the mother include the scene meeting with the psychiatrist and the end of the movie.
Symbolism: There's entirely too much symbolism to really to go into, but the overall use of symbolism throughout is very strong.
Music: The use of period music in the film is very well done. And if you feel like stretching symbols, some songs even feel like their themes reflect the events or upcoming events of the movie.
Cerebral Sci-Fi: The movie is one of the best types of sci-fi (to me), in which the sci-fi elements exist in order to progress the plot, but not to be completely thrown in your face throughout the movie (not that there's always something wrong with that), and the film exists more to learn and exam the characters. The sci- fi elements are VERY deep and honestly some viewers could probably watch it one time and not even occur to them that those elements really even exist.
Not to take away from the number of other things I really enjoy about Donnie Darko, but I'll move on to the most important part, my main point of contention about the movie.
How complicated is too complicated in plot? Donnie Darko strongly challenges my belief of that. After several viewings, the events of the film are pretty clear. But the "How?" is much different from the "What?". Before realizing there was a director-created, best explanation of the plot, I created my own idea of what occurred; which incidentally is really not even close to the "correct" explanation. The actual explanation is very abstract and deeply rooted in borderline pseudo-science, multidimensional theories and the most complicated, niche areas of physics. Even after reading it, I can't help but scratch my head a little bit. Which leads me to think that perhaps these ideas are too lightly touched upon in the actual film, with the primary explanation being a conversation between Donnie and his Physics teacher. This explanation is still very sparse, and only explains a portion of what is going on. The point I'm attempting to give is that when really read into, the actual ramifications behind the events of the plot are much too lightly touched upon, and almost too complicated to be reasonable in a film. Unless of course, you like to read into these things, in which case you would like this part of the movie (which is why I consider this issue to be a point of contention rather than a true negative).