Donnie Darko ( no spoilers please!)

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Finally saw this last night after missing it in the cinema (won't explain why) and it being rented out from the shop solid for the last two weeks.

Anyway...

What a fucking brilliant, brilliant film!

Funny, clever, weird, disturbing, brilliantly acted, great concept, thought-provoking, touching, confusing, just totally enjoyable. I wont reveal the plot in case anyone else hans't seen it, but I can't recommend it enough. Anything that manages to shoehorn emotional problems, teen-romance, giant bunny rabbits, timetravel, existentialism, air-disasters and the rest into one little independant (is it?) film is alright by me. Fantastic. Loved it. Can't wait to see it again.

Plus, a great 80s soundtrack; Tears For Fears, Echo & The Bunnymen, Joy Division etcetera.

Thoughts?

(No spoilers please! Consider the lillies!)

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:08 (twenty-two years ago)

erm, without spoilers::

I thought it was good.

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:11 (twenty-two years ago)

I loved it. I decided at the end that the most satisfying way to think about it was entirely literally - ie he wasn't mad or anything at all.

And Patrick Swayze was hilarious.

― Sam (chirombo), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Saw it for the first time with HSA over the weekend. It was much better than I expected it to be! (I'm suspicious of films that get a certain kind of hyping...) I liked the religious cult/motivational speaker subplot.

It was cleverly done. I didn't think it was revolutionary or earth-changing, but it was an interesting and engaging little film.

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:14 (twenty-two years ago)

The ending was kinda silly, wasn't it? I would've liked it to be more ambiguous, so you wouldn't know whether he was insane or not. It's hard to say anything more without spoilers.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't read it as him being mad at all. I read his actions as being the result of over-medication. Some of those anti-depression and anti-manic and hyperactivity drugs make you hallucinate like hell, very similar to a lot of the dysphasia that he was experiencing. Bright kids, experiencing "emotional problems" gets whacked on heavy chemicals that makes them worse - it's a common problem!

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Tidy as fuck film. Saw it ages before it came out over here at a special screening darling, and kept going on and on and on about it to everybody. There are a few duff moments (the Abyss shit, you know) but I mean, it was done on a small budget and for a debut feature - what an accomplishment. It really blew me away.

― Alex K (Alex K), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I rented it along with eight other movies when I was recovering from surgery, based on nothing but vaguely recognizing the title, and the description on the back. I think I watched it like four times that day, and bought it a week later. (This is a movie where it is very much worth listening to the commentary on the DVD, and especially the Jake-and-Richard commentary track during the scene in the movie theater -- Jake Gyllenhaal does his "Christopher Walken playing Frank" impression.)

I liked it for exactly the reasons Nick lists -- the sheer packing-in of many things, and the fact that they work. There has been a weird flavor of hype to it, and I think teenagers are responding to it in a way that I can't -- I really don't see it as a movie about adolescence, per se, adolescence is just the setting. But forget the hype, enjoy the film on its own merits -- it will probably be discussed to death ten years from now when many of the people involved have become much higher-profile.

The soundtrack isn't just great, it's so well-handled ... the two scenes which look like music videos -- not coincidentally, I think, the two scenes which use Tears for Fears, although the second of them is a cover -- those are fucking brilliant.

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:22 (twenty-two years ago)

(As far as the reading of it, in terms of madness -- I don't think this is a spoiler, but in a cut scene, the shrink tells him he's on placebos. He isn't medicated at all. According to commentary, it was taken out for time, not because the writer-director changed his mind about that.)

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Really on the placebos? (sorry, saw the video cause the DVD was out.) That changes my mind on the film. It doesn't ring true. A kid like that in the American school/mental health system would be medicated to f@ck, end of story!

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Even back in 88?

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Yes. That was just after the period that I got caught up in it, and they were trying to stick me on pills in 1986! (Thank goodness my mum fought medication so hard in my case!)

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Jesus. Fucking lunatics.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Well, I've watched someone close to me go through mental illness, and believe me, medication isn't always that bad.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Medication isn't necessarily bad. Trust me, I've got a very mentally ill brother who wouldn't be walking about without it. But *blanket* medication and over-medication is a terrible thing. Anyway, this isn't the time or the place for discussion of that...

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 08:48 (twenty-two years ago)

You're right.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Thursday, 24 April 2003 09:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Frank scared me & I, erm, fell asleep before the end.

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Thursday, 24 April 2003 09:40 (twenty-two years ago)

an essential DVD purchase i reckon, if only to get a better sense of what the thinking as behind the film, and what the hell actually happened

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 24 April 2003 10:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Look up the website. It's very good and tells more about the film and the aftermath.

― Carey (Carey), Thursday, 24 April 2003 13:59 (twenty-two years ago)

Is it just me? Cause the website didn't seem to work properly on my computer.

― kate, Thursday, 24 April 2003 14:01 (twenty-two years ago)

the website is too arty for its own good - i got bored after 8 seconds

― stevem (blueski), Thursday, 24 April 2003 14:03 (twenty-two years ago)

the thing for me about the website and the dvd extras is that it would seem to have nothing to do with mental health, etc. they've got this very elaborate time-artifact thing going on - and the whole thing becomes kind of a mess. i think they would have been better off not explaining any of that and just let people interpret the movie as they see fit

― ron (ron), Thursday, 24 April 2003 14:12 (twenty-two years ago)

The website has a whole lot of crap that could make your computer spaz. It's kind of long and tedious but if you were really into the movie then it's kind of fun and has newspaper clippings and excerpts from the book and kind of explanations.

― Carey (Carey), Thursday, 24 April 2003 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked it less after hearing the director's commentary. He over-explains the ending, and I liked the ambiguity better. The rest of the commentary is great though, as are some of the deleted scenes.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Friday, 25 April 2003 03:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I think there's a temptation to overexplain things which -- as they're presented -- are ambiguous, which is why listening to people talk about the shit they created can be dodgy. But if you just say, "Yeah, see .. it could be X, it could be Y," people smack you upside the head like that means you copped out and should've just picked one.

I don't like the movie less for the commentary -- there are some great bits in there, more about the process than the product -- but I sort of choose to ignore his definite statements about the "meaning."

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 25 April 2003 03:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Aye, but once you get people explaining stuff they've made you can just shout "Roland Barthes - death of the author!" at them, and they have to shut up, because what they intended doesn't matter any more.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Friday, 25 April 2003 08:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, but that doesn't really matter much outside of the academy, because everyone still -asks-.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 25 April 2003 08:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought the website was a bit of a rip off of the Reqiuem for a Dream one.

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Friday, 25 April 2003 11:36 (twenty-two years ago)

that song by The Church is awesome: "Under The Milky Way" turns out to be their most famous song! musta missed it at the time - folks this is a strong argument against indie-only...! better love that mainstream while yer young
now get off my knee

― Paul (scifisoul), Friday, 25 April 2003 12:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Argh! I forgot that I wanted to re-buy that Church album on CD after seeing the move...

― kate, Friday, 25 April 2003 12:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Ahhh, The Church 'Under The Milky Way' was very popular in Oz in it's day. As a tribute, the seedy den of vice that is The Church in Kings Cross on a Sunday morning plays that song with regularity, and lots of drunk Aussies and Kiwis sway and sing and get very dewy-eyed indeed.

― Wouldn't you like to know (Amused), Friday, 25 April 2003 12:39 (twenty-two years ago)

two months pass...

http://www.hope.falling-star.org/youarejim.gif

Which Donnie Darko character are you? by Shay

― Ally (mlescaut), Thursday, 3 July 2003 04:29 (twenty-two years ago)

I think I came out as Donnie last time I did this quiz *tries it again* ... yep, same thing again.

Congratulations, you are Donnie Darko. You're not afraid to speak what's on your mind and tell people what you're really thinking. You think about sex a lot and sometimes you wake up with your hands down your pants

Its funny because its true!

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 3 July 2003 04:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Sparkle Motion rocked. The handling of the guru guy was really really excellent.

I felt that in the end he was vindicated by what in real life would've been an hallucinatory fantasy with delusions of reference. Still, I loved the movie for so many other reasons that it didn't matter so much.

uh-oh... did I just give anything away? Sorry sorry sorry.

― colin s barrow (colin s barrow), Thursday, 3 July 2003 04:49 (twenty-two years ago)

http://www.hope.falling-star.org/youarefrank1.gif

thats cheery

― H (Heruy), Thursday, 3 July 2003 05:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I thought the website was a bit of a rip off of the Reqiuem for a Dream one.

that's because the same company designed both of them. probably the coolest company alive http://www.hi-res.net/

― JasonD (JasonD), Thursday, 3 July 2003 07:36 (twenty-two years ago)

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