I dunno....

Rating: 6/10 (17 May 2007)

I guess I'm not surprised at the demographic breakdown and the high rating this film has garnered; All through it, I found myself impressed by the acting and the dialogue. As Elvis Mitchell said in his NY Times review, this is Jake Gyllenthal's promise of star quality. But, having said that, I can't give the film as a whole the high marks that the masses have. Maybe it's because I've been where Donnie is portrayed to have been, maybe it's because when I think of great films, I look to the storyline as much as to the individual scenes. Maybe I just don't get it, but the mobius strip quality of the story just takes one step beyond my understanding of space/time continuum theory. There is this aura of "Edward Scissorhands" mixed with "Blue Velvet" and the atmospherics are absolutely hypnotizing, but that's the equivalent of a subliminal track repeating "you'll love this movie". When you come right down to it, the ending is unresolved and unresolvable. Is it a Christ allegory? Does Donnie go back in time to sacrifice himself so that Gretchen will live? OK. I can accept that. But by doing that, he allows Cunningham to escape punishment. There is no satisfactory resolution presented by the writer/director, as much as we might wish it to be so because we like the movie so much. It's certainly no "Chinatown" or "Treasure of Sierra Madre" and while enjoyable and watchable more than once as visual art, does not imnsho rise to the level of literature.