28.06.4.2:12

Donnie Darko is not the best SF film around and yet its haunting quality and multiple themes seduced me into multiple viewings. Released in 2001, the airplane engine crash plot was deemed a bit too much post-911. After 5 years, Malaysians finally get to watch the quirky movie yesterday night on 8TV.

If you think the movie sucks due to Frank, the ugly bunny or its confusing narration, I think the movie stands out as a film that is filled with a compilation of memorable scenes and witty dialogues. My favorite scenes are smurf thrashing talk, Donnie `s therapy session where Lily Thurman said “When the sky is opened, there will be no rules…” and also the cinema scene especially when the movie screened “Evil Dead” and “The Last Temptation of Christ” sort of represent the opposite polar of Donnie experience in the film and/or the underlying theme of the movie. As for the main protagonist (or antagonist, depending on how you see it), I don’t know who I admired most, Donnie or Jake, because both sort of melted into each other `s persona creepily. It’s kind of sad that I didn’t get to meet ANY bright but weird + insane guys during my school and campus years of Donnie Darko `s endearing quality (normally at this point, my mom is quick to add, “yeah…if you think axing a bronze figure and shooting people are endearing) or else, I would probably be more…insane!

The ugly bunny is actually a crucial character in the movie. In an Alice-in-The Wonderlandisque, it woke Donnie from his bed and became his guide (if not a nice one) in the tangent universe. I guess Richard Kelly in one way or another was inspire by the Lewis Caroll 's classic. The golf course seemed to match the rabbit hole whereas the scene where Donnie sees Frank in the mirror seemed like a twisted reinvention of "Through the Looking Glass".

In the Director’s Cut DVD (which mom bought in the U.K) has director Richard Kelly detailing his metaphysic approach to the movie. He raised up the idea of alternate universe and how people like Donnie were meant to seek for truth and unravel the whole mystery before the foretold cataclysm take place. Donnie was referred to as the "Receiver", controlled by the master force to deliver the "artefact" (which in this case the plane engine which dropped and travelled through the wormhole) to its righful place before the tangent universe collapse. That includes going back to where it started and died from a crashed plane engine? Sounds crazy? Tell me about it.

The movie although at the outset suggests that Donnie is psychologically troubled, it also does not dismiss that fact that probably he isn’t. Hence, Donnie has to live the bitter real world full of conformed ideas that‘s easily compartmentalized into fear and love and at the same time, receiving instructions from his ugly bunny-friend, Frank to do mischief in an alternate dreamy world where perhaps Dali would appreciate in his painting. The movie was a sleeper hit around the world as young people connect to the taste of teenage angst abundant in the movie. It became a cult among teenagers in the U.S and U.K because of this connectivity and its unsettling plot attracts multiple interpretations from viewers up to today. In short, it’s a wacky movie, rewatchable and haunting.

Well, 8TV, how about screening some of Richard Linklater’s films especially Waking Lives or After/Before Sunset/Sunrise (I always mixed the two). That would make me happier!

This is one of my fave dialogue...

Donnie: "I could spend my whole life debating over and over again, weighing the pros and cons, and in the end I still wouldn't have any proof, so I just don't debate it any more. (Laughs) It's absurd."

Dr. Thurman: "The search for God is absurd?"

Donnie: "It is if everyone dies alone."