Donnie Darko

[Adora]

C'mon, everyone loves this movie. How can you not? It's too appealing to the misunderstood misfit in all of us...

Being that I finally figured it all out today (yay! Took me long enough...) and the cinematic release of the Directors Cut is about to hit here (Australia) soon, so let's talk about it.

[viscousmemories]

I just saw it for the first time a couple months ago. It had a really powerful emotional impact on me, but I confess I have no idea what it was about.

[Adora]

The secret is the double movie feature he goes to see with Gretchen on Halloween.

[livius drusus]

Here's (http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3849663) an interesting discussion of the director's cut DVD from today's Morning Edition on NPR. I've never seen DD, but I'm going to have to now.

[SharonDee]

Here's (http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3849663) an interesting discussion of the director's cut DVD from today's Morning Edition on NPR. I've never seen DD, but I'm going to have to now.
Dang, you got to this thread first!

I was surprised and pleased to hear the NPR bit this morning. There's a director's cut now? Geez, I thought the original release had lots of cool stuff in it. The best part to me was listening to the commentary track, where Jake Gyllenhaal did his impression of Christopher Walken playing Frank. Hilarious!

[Gawen]

What in the world is Donny Darko?

[Adora]

*gasp* You mean you DONT know what Donnie Darko is!? Infidel!

It's a movie, about a very disturbed young man who has visions of a 6 foot bunnysuit called Frank, time travel and general mayhem.

It's very very good. Go rent it.

Anyway, this is a cut & paste from a reply I put on my LJ this morning, so scuse the slight disjointedness. And I haven't seen The Last Temptation of Christ since I was 11, so I don't remember it well.

The biggest "OMG THAT'S IT!" moment for me was when he walked out of the cinema to go burn down the guys house, and you saw what movies he was watching. Living Dead and The Last Temptation of Christ. TLToC is an excellent movie, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Jebus is hanging on the cross, waiting to die, when Lucifer comes along and offers him a chance off it, a chance for a real life, a chance to escape death. And Jebus says yes, goes off, marries Mary Magdelene, has kids, etc. I can't remember how it ended exactly, but in the absolute end, he goes back up onto the cross, like Donnie goes back into his bed, and dies. It's a "Tangent Universe" movie, like DD is an entire "Tangent Universe" that we experience through Donnie's eyes. He's not meant to be alive, he's literally "The Living Dead", he should have died when the jet engine fell on him. But Frank - be he god, Lucifer, Donnie's own personal Grim Reaper, whatever - lured him away from his end, and so set the universe into an unstable tangent, where Donnie can see the future, travel through time etc because it's so unstable. But in the end, it's a loop, because only by going down that tangent universe does Donnie cause the wormhole - because of the instability of the universe collapsing - that originally causes the jet engine to fall on his room.

But still, he knows this, he's been through all the intense events of the movie, the good and the bad, and he has so many good parts that he chooses to go back to bed, back to die. So that's the kind of humanist message of the film. Everyone dies alone, whether there's a god or Lucifer or monster or not, but we can die happy, if we choose.

That's the condensed version. There's other things as well, like Grandma Death being like some kind of Banshee, and the whole 80's social commentary at school, in the politics, and stuff, but yeah.

But that's what really set it off for me. I could never be arsed listening to the directors commentary, which apprently explains it all pretty well. I like to figure these things out on my own, no matter how long it takes me. Now, if only I could crack Mulholland Drive...

[JoeP]

Now, if only I could crack Mulholland Drive...Yes ... still working on that one ... even taking notes while watching the video :yawn:

[livius drusus]

Anyway, this is a cut & paste from a reply I put on my LJ this morning, so scuse the slight disjointedness. And I haven't seen The Last Temptation of Christ since I was 11, so I don't remember it well.

The biggest "OMG THAT'S IT!" moment for me was when he walked out of the cinema to go burn down the guys house, and you saw what movies he was watching. Living Dead and The Last Temptation of Christ. TLToC is an excellent movie, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Jebus is hanging on the cross, waiting to die, when Lucifer comes along and offers him a chance off it, a chance for a real life, a chance to escape death. And Jebus says yes, goes off, marries Mary Magdelene, has kids, etc. I can't remember how it ended exactly, but in the absolute end, he goes back up onto the cross, like Donnie goes back into his bed, and dies. It's a "Tangent Universe" movie, like DD is an entire "Tangent Universe" that we experience through Donnie's eyes. He's not meant to be alive, he's literally "The Living Dead", he should have died when the jet engine fell on him. But Frank - be he god, Lucifer, Donnie's own personal Grim Reaper, whatever - lured him away from his end, and so set the universe into an unstable tangent, where Donnie can see the future, travel through time etc because it's so unstable. But in the end, it's a loop, because only by going down that tangent universe does Donnie cause the wormhole - because of the instability of the universe collapsing - that originally causes the jet engine to fall on his room.

But still, he knows this, he's been through all the intense events of the movie, the good and the bad, and he has so many good parts that he chooses to go back to bed, back to die. So that's the kind of humanist message of the film. Everyone dies alone, whether there's a god or Lucifer or monster or not, but we can die happy, if we choose.

That's the condensed version. There's other things as well, like Grandma Death being like some kind of Banshee, and the whole 80's social commentary at school, in the politics, and stuff, but yeah.


That's a mighty fine early morning, hazy memory, disjointed movie commentary, Adora. I think you picked just the right college major. :yup2:

[Adora]

Considering the amount it's going to cost me, and my inability to figure out how I'm going to pay it off, yeah, I fucking hope so.

[livius drusus]

They gave me that "you want fries with that" bullshit too, ya know, and I went with a nice, normal English and History BA. You'll sort it out, and if not, we can always institute an FF scholarship program with shady, Eva Peron-style financial dealings.

[Adora]

Sounds good to me! I'm never adverse to taking dirty money.