Staff Picks: DONNIE DARKO (2001)

“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit


By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)

“Donnie Darko” is a seminal film for me. Obviously not just for me. I know it means a lot for so many people… but for me personally, seeing it was a seismic event. It affected so many aspects of my life. “Donnie Darko” influenced my taste in music, as well as the way I thought about art and it definitely influenced the way I saw film. I hadn’t really experienced anything that esoteric at the point in my life. The film isn’t nearly as weird as other works Richard Kelly would produce subsequently or many works by other filmmakers but at the time, it was mind-blowing to me. I’ll grant that it’s a hard film to understand and it took god knows how many viewings to feel like I completely put the pieces together but in the end, that’s not even the point. The film is something not to be understood but to be felt. That’s why it was successful in a way that Kelly’s later works weren’t (not to impugn said works in any way). You certainly hadn’t experienced anything like what’s happening in the overall plot but what Richard Kelly absolutely had a handle on was how coming of age actually feels.

I really can’t describe the plot but I’ll do what I can. “Donnie Darko” is primarily about Donnie- played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Donnie is a misfit in the truest sense. Ludicrously intelligent and unable to fit in even within his own family unit, let alone his high school or friend group, there’s rarely a point in the film that you can’t feel the overwhelming sadness bordering on despair Donnie feels every second he’s awake. However, one time while Donnie is sleepwalking, he narrowly avoids death at the hands of a jet engine falling through his ceiling. He avoids his untimely demise because he’s beckoned away by Frank, a 6 foot tall (really fucked up looking) rabbit. Frank tells Donnie that the world is going to end in just under a month. From there, Frank occasionally tasks Donnie with great destructive acts, seemingly in the name of a greater purpose. As the story wears on, it becomes clear that the events of the film aren’t anything that’s supposed to be happening or have happened and slowly everything is stripped away, leading to things clicking into place to allow Donnie to literally save the world.

It admittedly kind of sounds like a superhero movie and that’s not only part of Kelly’s design (hence Donnie’s alliterative name) but largely how I came to understand the film. I’ve been aware of multiversal theory and the finer points of time travel from an early age due to my lifelong passion for superhero comics. Granted, the answers are really all left to you. Well, in the original release. Part of why I’ve never liked Kelly’s director’s cut as much is that I feel like it holds your hand in a way that almost feels insulting, especially in a secondary release. If Kelly (and seemingly everyone else involved from a studio level on down) trusted the audience enough with the original release, a release that exploded in popularity on video and DVD after the film died a quick death in theaters, then why bother making a more normal movie? Because make no mistake, “Donnie Darko” is a weird movie. To me, that was part of its appeal though. I knew nothing about it when I got it from the video store but I connected with the character of Donnie on a very deep level. I felt as alone as he felt and watching the film over and over on some level assuaged that. The ultimate result was the film rewarded those repeat viewings with the satisfaction akin to solving a puzzle and also kind of tuned me to weirder films that I ended up discovering and embracing in a way that I don’t know that I would have if not for this film.

When you think about it, the existence of “Donnie Darko” is legitimately nothing short of a miracle. In retrospect, the fact that major Hollywood folks like Drew Barrymore would grant Richard Kelly something like five million dollars for not only his first film and not only such a strange film…but such an ambitious film is mind-boggling, especially in this day and age. What’s even more impressive is what Kelly is able to accomplish. Five million dollars is definitely a fair amount for a first film but considering the scale of events that Kelly is illustrating, the mere fact that he was able to create something that felt truly grand is really something special. More than that though, it’s how he’s able to make the smallest moments mean so much. Despite the genre elements, the film is his most successful work because it truly is a coming-of-age film more than anything else. It’s because the characters feel real and everything feels grounded in something not far from reality that make this film a legitimate masterpiece. The family drama is a truly touching story of a normal family who loves each other even being pushed and pulled between breaking points. The love story unfolds beautifully like a blossoming flower. The smaller conflicts like dealing with bullies have as much a sense of foreboding as the grander science fiction story being told.

Obviously, yeah, this is Richard Kelly’s film and he’s ultimately responsible for it but the cast is spectacular. Lead by the aforementioned performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, he inhabits the character in a way that’s utterly flawless. Gyllenhaal’s proved himself to be a truly great actor since but it all goes back to this role in this film. He manages to be a light in the darkness even when the character feels like they’re a part of that darkness. You can’t help but feel everything he’s going through and I admit that I related on a primal level but I can’t even truly put into words how good I think his portrayal of Donnie is. The best I can say is that even hearing who else was up for the part, I can literally picture no one else. Not for a second. Jena Malone also manages to bring something truly great to her role as Donnie’s girlfriend. When she says “some people are just born with tragedy in their blood”, it’s impossible to not feel the weight of that. Much like Gyllenhaal, she manages to balance the light and the dark required for the role in an almost magical way. To be honest though, there really isn’t a weak link in the cast at all. It’s not as much of an ensemble as maybe it could have been but what everyone from what Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne are able to do as Donnie’s parents, what Maggie Gyllenhaal and Daveigh Chase pull off as Donnie’s sisters, what Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle are able to accomplish as Donnie’s mostly supportive teachers…everyone involved absolutely brought it and the film is all the better for having such a wonderful cast.

I feel like every film I write about, for this column, is important but “Donnie Darko” is on a completely different level for me. It’s a film that’s so important personally and one that I love so much that I became embarrassed about how much I loved it and how much I spoke about it to everyone around me for a long time. I clearly got over that because here we are. The fact that this film holds up as well as it does after two decades suggests that it could live forever as a classic and it absolutely deserves to. Every coming-of-age film should aspire to feel this grounded and real and every sci-fi mind-bender should aspire to feel this grand and epic. It’s totally contradictory to say but is just illustrative of how impressive a piece of work “Donnie Darko” really is. I feel it is truly one of the great films and I don’t mean just of semi-recent history. “Donnie Darko” is a stellar piece of art.

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