DVD Shop: Buy Donnie Darko Online

Average Rating:

The acting is consistently outstanding, with a list of well-known names in the cast, along with less familiar ones. Jake Gyllenhaal gives an amazing performance that is so convincing, you forget that he is acting; he IS Donnie Darko. While the story is mainly told through his eyes, the other characters are surprisingly sympathetic as well. This is not an easy feat for a script to accomplish, especially when the viewer must focus so much attention on every event. It would have been easy to create a one-dimensional hero and a bunch of villains, but writer/director Richard Kelly doesn't take the easy way out.

Instead, we get a highly intelligent and challenging film that engages us as much as it baffles us, that injects enough humor to keep us from stress-overload, and most importantly, makes us want to watch it again and again, even after we know what's going on. In this sense, "Donnie Darko" succeeds where other films have fallen short: for example, I enjoyed the complexities of "Memento", but I was not able to identify or even care very much about any of the characters. The same was true of "The Usual Suspects". Both are excellent films, but I viewed both from a distance, more analytically than emotionally.

I did not view "Donnie Darko" from a distance. I was drawn into the world that it creates, and enjoyed it enough to return more than once. A brilliant first film from Richard Kelly, who has set a very high standard for himself.

The DVD does full justice to this fine movie. The video and audio are excellent, and the extra features are quite thorough. I particularly enjoyed the commentary by Richard Kelly and Jake Gyllenhaal, which I listened to the second time I watched the film. They do a great job of helping the viewer to connect the dots. They also include just enough of the usual "behind the scenes" banter to keep the commentary from becoming too academic.

This DVD would definitely be included in any "desert island" list that I would ever compile. Strongly recommended!

Set in October of 1988, the story follows young Donnie Darko, a seemingly unbalanced teenager who is prone to sleepwalking. On one such night journey he meets a new friend, a 6-foot tall bunny rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world is going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Upon returning home the next morning, he finds that an unaccounted-for airplane engine has crash-landed on his house, crushing the room where he should have been asleep in bed. It's the kind of setup that keeps the audience on its toes for the rest of the film. Where did the engine come from? Who is Frank? What do the fates, which obviously want him alive, have in store for Donnie Darko?

The problem is that writer/director Richard Kelly has some ideas for answers to these questions, but he either: 1) Didn't have the budget to realize them; 2) Didn't want to give them away too early; or 3) Didn't want to give them away at all, preferring for the audience to fill in the gaps on their own. I don't have a problem when most filmmakers choose path #3. The audience should act as a participant in determining the meaning of the film. But they can't do it alone, in a vacuum. Kelly provides clues all along, but they are so hidden and so obscure, that even the most discerning viewer probably wouldn't be able to find them on first (or second, or third pass). It becomes even more frustrating when the ending, supposedly constructed to tie up all loose ends (or at least all loose ends that the writer has bothered tying up), bends and breaks the audience's ability to suspend disbelief. There's one final thread that I still can't logically rationalize, even though I know what was supposed to happen.

Donnie rails against ignore-the-grey-area thinking, claiming that life is more complex than that. I wish Kelly would have heeded his own advice, for he does a lousy job presenting complex characters. Most everyone here is either good or evil, black or white. He loves the beatific Darko family, the progressive young teachers at school, and Gretchen (Jena Malone), Donnie's new girlfriend. He hates, and is unsympathetic to, Kitty, the little girl dance troupe that she exploits for her own ego, and the infomercial pitchman whose theories she buys into wholeheartedly. No scene holds a more pointed example of Kelly's inability to hide his hand, than an emergency PTA meeting. Called because someone has flooded the school and put an axe in the head of its mascot, it is inevitably interrupted by Kitty, who has discovered that an English teacher (Drew Barrymore) is teaching Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors". "Do you even know who Graham Green is?" asks a concerned mother. "I think we've all seen 'Bonanza'," comes the arrogant yet ignorant reply. Kelly didn't even have enough confidence in his good guys -- and by association, their quest -- to give them credible bad guys to rail against. Instead he offers villains whose actions are one step above twirling their moustaches menacingly and tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks.

In Kelly's defense, "Donnie Darko" was his first film. And to his credit, there is a lot here that is either very accomplished or shows potential. I did say that every time I watch the film it affects me in a poignant way, and now I'll tell you why.

First of all, it looks great. Kelly and crew, low budget or no low budget, have made a film that you can stand alongside any big budget blockbuster of the day, and it wouldn't look out of place. They even manage a skillful recreation of the living water effect first seen in James Cameron's "The Abyss". His camera work is ambitious or simple when necessary. In a film called "Donnie Darko", one would expect that light (or the lack thereof) would be an important player. Kelly and cinematographer Stephen B. Poster use clean suburban sunshine in the daytime, and extreme darkness at night. The latter is often punctuated by blinding flashes of light, most notably the brilliant beam that presciently spews from Frank's left eye.

Kelly does fine detailed work making sure the authenticity of the time period is maintained. From the clothes, to the conversations, to, most importantly, the music, everything fits the era to a T. He manages to get fine use out of not one but two Tears for Fears songs: "Head Over Heels" adds power to an effective tracking shot showing the treacherous ecosystem that is Donnie's school; a cover of "Mad World" adds melancholy, without adding melodrama, to the affective denouement (like I said, emotionally the film works, but it can't stand up to reason).

Overall, I'll give Richard Kelly the benefit of the doubt, and deign to recommend his film. Like I said, it offered me enough of a visceral rush that I've seen it multiple times, and look forward to seeing many times more. For all potential audience members, remember this: "Donnie Darko" will not make much sense, at least until you've done some further research into the hidden meanings of the film. Appreciate it as an emotional experience first, and its pleasures will fulfill you.

I guess I liked it after all.