![\"donnie\"](\"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/donnie.jpg\")
\n
\nDonnie Darko (2001)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by Richard Kelly
\n113 min. (Original Cut)
\n133 min. (Director\u2019s Cut)<\/p>\n
\n
\nDonnie Darko (2001)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by Richard Kelly
\n113 min. (Original Cut)
\n133 min. (Director\u2019s Cut)<\/p>\n
Spoilers ahead.<\/i><\/p>\n
The first time I saw this movie, I hated it. Or rather, I hated where it ended up. I appreciated the journey, but not the destination. God damn does it wrap up in a cheese ball way. That \u2018Mad World\u2019 montage? Jena Malone\u2019s and Donnie\u2019s mother staring at each other? Man did that shit bug me. So much so that for a while I wrote off the entire movie as bad.<\/p>\n
But then, here and there, I\u2019d think about the parts I liked and want to watch it again. And each time I\u2019d re-watch, I\u2019d like the movie a bit more. But that ending remained a sticking point. It always made me cringe.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t remember exactly when I came to the realization that the ending is supposed <\/i>to make you cringe from its cheesiness\u2014and that Donnie laughing in bed is meant to be him laughing at the cheesy resolution\u2014but once I did, god damn. Fireworks in the brain. What a movie. Five stars.
\n
\nI\u2019m not exaggerating. I really do believe Donnie Darko deserves five stars. It\u2019s a perfect movie, for what it is\u2014a surreal ode to teenagehood. And it\u2019s also arguably the most misunderstood movie of all time. Its fervent supporters\u2014people that have watched it dozens and dozens of times and have come up with elaborate theories about it\u2014don\u2019t even understand it. I\u2019m literally the only person I\u2019ve ever encountered that truly gets this movie.<\/p>\n
And I know art is subjective, and everything is up for interpretation, and nobody is wrong, and everybody is right, and we are all equal, and blah blah blah. I know all that. But I\u2019m still<\/i> right. Even if Richard Kelly himself were to not agree with my assessment, I\u2019m still right. Because my understanding of the film actually makes sense<\/i>, whereas everyone else\u2019s fucking doesn\u2019t<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Fans of Donnie Darko tend to get bogged down trying to figure out the exact mechanics of the science fiction elements in the movie. It becomes an obsession. Scour the internet for a few seconds and you\u2019ll find tons of theories, most of them with some basics in common, but all of them definitely different\u2014and all of them ultimately useless.<\/p>\n
This movie is an intentionally unsolvable puzzle. (Yes, even the director\u2019s cut, which is touted as easier to understand or whatever but definitely retains the unsolvability of the original cut.) There\u2019s simply not enough information in either version of the film\u2014or even in its supplemental tie-in material\u2014to truly understand everything that\u2019s going on. At some point, every theorizer has to just make shit up out of thin air. So why fucking bother? Donnie Darko himself never fully understands the world around him, so why should we?<\/p>\n
Bothering to try and fully understand the logistics of this movie is to fundamentally misunderstand what this movie is even about. This movie is about adolescence<\/i>. An impossible to understand time period in one\u2019s life. A very subjective, swirling time. A dystopia, essentially, full of arbitrary countdowns (to a holiday, to summer, to graduation, to your 18th birthday, to your 21st birthday) confusing rules you’re meant to follow, and unexplainable urges and impulses. This movie is an ode to all that, and the sci-fi elements are just clever, metaphoric expressions of that theme. So if this movie is to be explored, it should be explored on those<\/i> terms\u2014not obsessively mapped out in an infographic like fucking Primer<\/b>. Nothing is gained here from mystery solving, and everything is gained from simply opening your heart and allowing yourself to truly feel\u00a0what’s going on.<\/p>\n
Donnie Darko is, in essence, a collage. It\u2019s an emotional, cathartic experiment in cut and paste, brimming with elements from Richard Kelly\u2019s teenagehood\u2014movies and songs he loved, experiences he had, imagery that fascinated him, philosophical and spiritual obsessions, fears and desires, you name it. And in the universe of the film, all these elements, even the fantastical ones, are equally real. They do not merely linger in Donnie\u2019s angsty mind\u2014they also make up the ridiculous world he must navigate. And what a beautiful world it is.<\/p>\n
The look of this film is fucking hypnotic. I\u2019ve never seen anything quite like it. It\u2019s got this swimmingly dreamlike softness, and there\u2019s something about the blues and the shadows that is just perfection. I\u2019m not even sure they even knew how they achieved what they achieved, because Kelly\u2019s subsequent work not only has not looked anything like it, it hasn\u2019t looked good on any level whatsoever. I really think this was probably just a perfect storm of a low budget, gut instinct, and happy accidents. I mean just look at the still I chose for the beginning of the article. That\u2019s just flawless fucking lighting. Even if the actually content of this movie does nothing for you, if you can\u2019t, at the very least, be enamored by the look of this movie, then you just plain don\u2019t like looking at movies. Watch this and then go watch any movie of a comparable budget that has come out since. No comparison. But I digress. Back to the topic of this movie\u2019s themes.<\/p>\n
Basically, one should appreciate the ride much as Donnie appreciates it\u2014with cynicism and delight, disgust and laughter. You should feel all these things for this movie and more. It is a thing to both love and hate. It is designed to bring out the inner judgmental youth in us all. You\u2019re supposed to have complex, difficult to describe feelings about it, and complex, easy to describe feelings about it as well, because it\u2019s about that wonderful and awful age where you are brimming with opinions of that sort.<\/p>\n
What would Donnie himself<\/i> think about the film Donnie Darko? He\u2019s a very opinionated kid, and it\u2019s likely he might have issues with it. As I pointed out earlier, him laughing in bed is our self-referential taste of what his thoughts on the film might be. Overwhelmed by the silliness of everything, he can\u2019t help but laugh. And the resolution to this film really is quite overwhelmingly silly. I\u2019m not saying the film didn\u2019t come to its logical conclusion\u2014it totally did\u2014but the style in which things wrap up have a certain intentional cheese. For a movie that rebels so hard against 80\u2019s period piece cliche, it sure does finish out in full embrace of corniness. And that\u2019s a beautiful thing. It\u2019s a much needed nod to the inherently unavoidable silliness of overly ambitious and convoluted plots, making the great lesson of the movie that overcomplicated shit\u2014i.e., the world\u2014is inherently funny. And that the opposite of fear isn\u2019t love. It\u2019s laughter. Laughter is fearlessness.<\/p>\n
5 out of 5 Codys.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\n
\nDonnie Darko (2001)
\n<\/b>Written & Directed by Richard Kelly
\n113 min. (Original Cut)
\n133 min. (Director\u2019s Cut)<\/p>\n
Spoilers ahead.<\/i><\/p>\n
The first time I saw this movie, I hated it. Or rather, I hated where it ended up. I appreciated the journey, but not the destination. God damn does it wrap up in a cheese ball way. That \u2018Mad World\u2019 montage? Jena Malone\u2019s and Donnie\u2019s mother staring at each other? Man did that shit bug me. So much so that for a while I wrote off the entire movie as bad.<\/p>\n
But then, here and there, I\u2019d think about the parts I liked and want to watch it again. And each time I\u2019d re-watch, I\u2019d like the movie a bit more. But that ending remained a sticking point. It always made me cringe.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t remember exactly when I came to the realization that the ending is supposed <\/i>to make you cringe from its cheesiness\u2014and that Donnie laughing in bed is meant to be him laughing at the cheesy resolution\u2014but once I did, god damn. Fireworks in the brain. What a movie. Five stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,1],"tags":[32,1396,1398,1399,1400,1397,1402,1403,1404,1401,104,185],"class_list":["post-1979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-codysreviews","tag-cody-clarke","tag-donnie-darko","tag-donnie-darko-analysis","tag-donnie-darko-essay","tag-donnie-darko-explained","tag-donnie-darko-review","tag-jena-malone","tag-mad-world","tag-primer","tag-richard-kelly","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1979"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1996,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1979\/revisions\/1996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}