donnie darko - please explain.

I shall come up with some half-baked theory!

The crux of the movie is basically just one blatant reference in the movie, and if you don't catch it, nothing really makes sense.

The double-feature they go see at the theatre is playing "Evil Dead" and "The Last Temptation of Christ". Now, I haven't seen the latter, but I understand the gist of it. Christ is given the opportunity to live in a world where he WASN'T crucified, to see what it's like, and has to decide -- ergo, his last temptation.

This entire movie is basically a throwback to that idea.

Donnie Darko doesn't have the ability to travel in time. That's what I thought, at first, and I tried to justify the whole movie in that frame -- that he was learning to control this ability, or something. But he didn't have any ability at all. He was just subject to fate.

I think it's best explained that a wormhole opens up on Oct 31st. The jet engine on the plane gets sucked into it and then lands in his bedroom. on Oct 2nd. At this point, he is simply given the opportunity to live the days between Oct 2nd and Oct 31st as they would happen if he cheats death and avoids the jet engine, or if he doesn't, and just dies. If he dies, nothing ever happens -- he never burns down porn-daddy's house, so he never goes to jail, so freaky jesus-lady can go on the plane, so his mother never has to, etc. His mother and his girlfriend are still alive.

The movie with all his hallucinations and angst is supposed to be him realizing the inevitability of fate.

the plane engine wormhole thing makes sense, although i didnt get why donnie drove his dead girlfriend out to the mountainside.

"Plot hole I just thought of: If Donnie sacrifices himself to save the girl he loves, isn't he dooming his sister to associating with Patrick Swayze's child molestor character (since he won't be alive to set fire to his house so the police won't find his child porn stash)?"

surely she would be dead anyway as there isn't anything in the chain of events which would prevent his sister from being on the plane coming home from her dance competition? the only difference would be that it would the fear/love lady on the plane, not his mother.

and hang on, i don't get how frank is managing to cause the end of the world. or is the end of the world just a metaphor, and its only Donnie's world that will end because his mother and sister and girlfriend are dead?

i know i'm missing something really obvious, someone tell me what it is!!

btw, the ending is really sad and beautiful and very Wonderful Life-y, yeah.

i feel like someone's grandmother that has just walked in halfway through a screening of Memento.

Wonderful acting from the family (especially Mary McDonell) and an impressively audacious debut for the director. But I gag when people tell me this is one of the greatest movies of the year. Far too unpleasant and mismanaged for such a ranking. Not to mention the director's filmschoolish obsession with interminable speed-up-slow-down musical sequences.

"surely she would be dead anyway as there isn't anything in the chain of events which would prevent his sister from being on the plane coming home from her dance competition? the only difference would be that it would the fear/love lady on the plane, not his mother."

I sort of doubt that his little sister would go to the dance competition that short a time after her brother had been destroyed by a jet engine. But maybe TEAM SPARKLE could inspire that kind of devotion.

well it was 28 days later. how long does she need forgodsake?

Off my dick! Now!

anyway how DID the website help explain frank to you? he seems an enigmatic "insert yr. own psychological explaination here" figure in any particular case.

I too assumed it was some enigmatic bullshit (sonuva bitch! The guy I shot was the bunny dude from Doom Generation! wowsa!), but evidently the people who created the film have the whole science mapped out. It just was too complicated to share with the film audience (most of whom are happy enough to hear fuckin' Joy Division and see teenage outcasts with super powers that they don't give a shit about plot anyway) so they skipped it for some "enigmatic psychological" hooey.

And if you think the movie was freakin' obvious (you meant freakin'), look at all the chappies above us with question marks in their posts. I get the movie, in the sense that I know what they left out. And frankly, even if the enigmatic Frank bullshit was there, I'd still have to put up with broad generalizations about people who aren't cool like us, lame jokes about smurfs (who are all secretly psychotics and child molesters, btw.), and other bits of overtechnical detritus. I want to call it a promising movie, but this guy is getting such a ass-licking that he's probably not gonna get much better.

(What website?)

it's pretty spiffy if I do say so myself.

Graham, the amount of effort it takes to write a couple paragraphs while bored at work is fairly minimal. I greatly enjoy discussing and debating the merits of movies and music. I may sound overanimated to you (well, I DID tell Sterling to get off my dick, I'll admit), but trust me. I will not work up a tizzy over anything on ILXOR. 's fun, and Sterling makes a fine sparring partner.

i generally detest films like Memento for the nasueating and constant hammering at the audience that: 'THIS IS A CLEVER PLOT. SEE, SEE HOW CLEVER WE ARE' while simultaneously pushing any emotional involvement, character development or SUBSTANCE to the wings. films like Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are also rubbish because the oh so unexpected twist completely negates any reason for rest of the film existing in the first place and the only result is that you feel like you've wasted your time with the whole thing in the first place.

i think as much as he may have wanted to go that route Richard Kelly was aware of this and hence he held back on the plot twists so that he could foster some kind of depth to the films characters and to the audience's relationships with them. the extra-cinema information is something of a compromise, or a concession. and still there's that nagging worry in my mind that it sort of makes the film itself kind of redundant..

still garbage.

Stop watching it then.

I watched the DC sober the other day and, actually, everything makes perfect sense. I found this gratifying.

dc cab?

http://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/514G0SS4GHL._AA280_.jpg

Donnie Corko.

Donnie Corky Romano.

DIRTY CUSTARD

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N9caz5TWyrc/T7PiCi3chsI/AAAAAAAAB5w/aHh8z_CloAw/s1600/753.jpg

I like the movie (although I haven't seen it in years) but the director's cut is abominable.

Weird. This morning as I was driving to work I randomly got a line from this in my head. DD's mom to her husband:

Our son just called me a bitch.
You're not a bitch. You're bitchin', but you're not a bitch.

For some reason the that whole exchange always cracked me up.

That bit was adlibbed apparently.

Say what you will about this film, but it's got a lot of memorable lines.

I like it, but the bit that spoils it for me is the whole time-spear thing. It just doesn't really work for me.

I still find myself saying "no mail today, maybe tomorrow" from time to time.

why are you wearing that stupid man suit

I hated the dc so much there's pretty much no chance that I'll ever see the theatrical release

I still find myself saying "no mail today, maybe tomorrow" from time to time.

yeah. me too.

it is not that important that you see donnie darko but for what it's worth i have never seen a "director's cut" more damaging to a movie than this one xp