Donnie Darko

The films that we have been watching recently in lectures have been of a dystopian theme and now we are moving on to looking at films that play tricks with narrative. Donnie Darko is the first of these films.

I had seen this film before, but when I watched it for a second time and made notes about the themes within the film I found I understood a lot more of the techniques that the film makers had used to create the film as a whole. I was particularly interested in the themes running throughout the film and was actually surprised at some of them as they weren’t apparent the first time I had watched it. Here are some of my thoughts on the film, mostly from my notes so I apologise if they are quite disjointed.

Within the first scene it is clear that there is going to be something psychologically dark about this film: The viewer is introduced to Donnie lying in the middle of a mountain road in his pyjamas who appears to not have a clue where he is. Upon arriving home, allusions to Halloween point towards a significant event in the future. Once Frank appears and warns of the end of the world, the whole film becomes shrouded in paranoia and the feeling of impending doom. This feeling escalates as Donnie doesn’t know how to deal with what he has been told and the things happening around him.

The main themes are shown quite obviously in the “fear and love” scene in which the teacher tries to get Donnie to place a scenario onto a scale that only has two answers: fear, and love. Donnie becomes frustrated and angry due to the fact that life just isn’t that simple. I would say that one of the main themes in this film is to do with decision making and Donnie’s inability to choose his actions. His complete overwhelming fear of loneliness leads him to do exactly what Frank (his imaginary friend) tells him to.

Donnie as a character is obviously troubled which is evident when he starts talking about his past in which he burned down an abandoned house and ended up in prison. Not only this, I would argue that his character shows signs of being sexually disturbed, especially when he gets hypnotised and cannot be taken off the topic of sex no matter what the therapist says to him. He is clearly a very intelligent individual that finds it very difficult to deal with his emotions and mental state. His girlfriend says his name sounds like a superheroes name and he says “what makes you think I’m not” which suggests that he may think that he is able to do a greater amount of good or that he just has illusions of grandeur.

His whole attitude is quite immature and seems greatly influenced by films and comics, he mentions at one point his love of “Back to the Future” and how futuristic everything is. Also how similar everything is to the book “The Destructors” is a suggestion that he may have stole ideas from it. Is this whole scenario simply a construction of his twisted imagination being influenced by the things around him?

Another theme that kept coming up was “predestination” and the will of God. Donnie can see what is going to happen in the future, yet he cannot stop it. He argues with a teacher who is teaching him privately about time travel that he cannot choose what he is going to do as it is within the will of God. However when his therapist asks him about why he does what Frank says, he says it is because if he doesn’t he will have nobody left: while he keeps doing what Frank says he at least has him. When asked whether he believes in God he quickly changes subject, most likely out of fear for denying something that could be real. Maybe he is doing the will of God, after all he did burn down the house of a man distributing child pornography without knowing he did that at all.

It could be argued that the entire film after the disaster at the house could have been the result of his deteriorating mental state although there are many signs that this is not true as main characters are shown surviving a better life without him once he has died. Also the jet engine still came from nowhere, the film really gives you no choice but to believe that it all truly happened.

The actual narrative in the film jumps from being literal to figurative. Real world events are explained by the fiction that Donnie is studying in class and everything that is happening around him seems to relate to his personal struggle. Nothing in the film is irrelevant to what is happening.

Over all, I found Donnie Darko to be a very exciting film and so intriguing that I could probably write about it for years! Unfortunately my other projects are calling my name. I would recommend the film to anybody who wants to really think about something deeply.