Clarity in Madness

Rating: Null/10 (19 December 2003)

Donnie Darko is a troubled teenager who has emotional problems and to control the effects of this he has to take medication. It is while under the influence of these pills that he learns that the world is coming to an end, with his only guide being a giant rabbit called Frank.

The name 'Darko' is symbolic of the perception people have of his mental state and his mad world in which the film takes place.

The use of soundtrack within this film helps to convey in my opinion, the rollercoaster of emotions that the viewer will be subjected to over the course of the hour and three quarters. The most noticeable example of music being used to build up emotion was 'The Killing Moon' by Echo and the Bunnymen. This is a great tune and its title fore-warns the audience about what is to come in the narrative.
The camera work in this film is some of the best I have seen. An example that really stood out for me was the opening of the film where rather than staying with the main character, Donnie, the camera pans around the village depicting the general town life that will eventually be disrupted.

Although there were some comic moments, for example the self-help video, on the whole I didn't find the comic touches as funny as they otherwise would have been, because the general mood of the film instead made you feel sorry for Donnie Darko. I felt that the use of a rabbit as a figure of Donnie's imagination was not necessarily comical, as I have heard suggested, given that Donnie was under the influence of medication at the time. Frank would therefore have seemed very real and non-comical to Donnie.

I thought this film was a great film with a good soundtrack and poetic camera movements. I felt that the main message from this film was that even in madness, moments of clarity are present and the person can actually be saner than the people around them.
10/10