Scenes I Go Back To: Donnie Darko

I have no idea if Richard Kelly will ever come out from underneath Donnie Darko‘s shadow (we’ll find out later this year when Southland Tales is finally released).  His debut feature is just so wonderfully made, blending traditional sci-fi concepts (time travel, parallel universes) with 1980s nostalgia and a solid undercurrent of high school angst and alienation.  It’s a little messy in places due to its ambitions, but it still works in all sorts of beautiful and mysterious ways.

The film is full of great scenes: the Smurfs discussion, Donnie’s dismantling of Jim Cunningham’s philosophy, Donnie and Gretchen’s first kiss, and of course, Sparkle Motion.  But this one, where Donnie and his psychiatrist discuss death and God, and Donnie confesses his great fear and loneliness, always hits me the hardest.

This entry is part of my August blogging project, “Scenes I Go Back To”.

3 Comments

  1. Gravatar for Dennis Dennis 2 years, 7 months ago

    In your reference to messiness, are you are referencing some of the difficulty in following the continuity of the storyline and understanding the motivations of all the characters?  I always had trouble with this, even after multiple viewings, until I watched the director’s cut.  The inclusion of a couple extra scenes and especially the excerpts from /The Philosophy of Time Travel/ (you still have to pause to read them completely) help an awful lot and really perfect the narrative.

  2. Gravatar for valis valis 2 years, 7 months ago

    The director’s cut of Donnie Darko is everything that is wrong about Donnie Darko.

  3. Gravatar for Jason Morehead Jason Morehead 2 years, 7 months ago

    @Dennis: When I was talking about “messiness”, I was primarily referring to the end, where it felt like Kelly was trying to wrap up a few too many threads in a satisfying manner.

    That being said, I also found the “Director’s Cut” to be somewhat disappointing, if only because “perfecting the narrative” meant that it stripped out a lot of the ambiguity and mystery from the film.

    So, I guess I prefer the messiness—and the ambiguity that brings—to the clearer version contained within the “Director’s Cut”.

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