Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I've watched "Donnie Darko" three times now in the last five days, and still can't say definitively if I like it. I appreciate the heck out it, am impressed by the imagination and creativity of the filmmakers, and admire the fact that what they put on screen belies their $4 million budget. Most of all, I enjoy the heightened sense of awareness I get every time it finishes. It's a feeling that lets me know, without question, that I've been affected by what I just saw. But when I think about the film rationally, as opposed to emotionally which is probably the best way to view it, it crumbles under the weight of its own conceit.

Set in October of 1988, in the midst of the Bush-Dukakis Presidential race, the story follows young Donnie Darko, a seemingly unbalanced teenager who is prone to sleepwalking. On one such night journey he meets a new friend, a 6-foot tall bunny rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world is going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Upon returning home the next morning, he finds that an unaccounted-for airplane engine has crash-landed on his house, crushing the room where he should have been asleep in bed. It's the kind of setup that keeps the audience on its toes for the rest of the film. Where did the engine come from? Who is Frank? What do the fates, which obviously want him alive, have in store for Donnie Darko?

The problem is that writer/director Richard Kelly has some ideas for answers to these questions, but he either: 1) Didn't have the budget to realize them; 2) Didn't want to give them away too early; or 3) Didn't want to give them away at all, preferring for the audience to fill in the gaps on their own. I don't have a problem when most filmmakers choose path #3. The audience should act as a participant in determining the meaning of the film. But they can't do it alone, in a vacuum. Kelly provides clues all along, but they are so hidden and so obscure, that even the most discerning viewer probably wouldn't be able to find them on first (or second, or third pass). I was only clued in upon listening to his DVD commentary track. Which, to me, is unfair. The audience should be given a reasonable chance to unfold the mystery without unsolicited hints. Kelly doesn't allow us even that. It becomes even more frustrating when the ending, supposedly constructed to tie up all loose ends (or at least all loose ends that the writer has bothered tying up), bends and breaks the audience's ability to suspend disbelief. There's one final thread that I still can't logically rationalize, even though I know what was supposed to happen.

There's a scene where shrill and conservative health teacher Kitty Farmer (Beth Grant) involves her class in an exercise that has them classifying different situations along a life-line, with "Fear" on one end and "Love" on the other. When it comes to his turn, Donnie rails against this kind of ignore-the-grey-area thinking, claiming that life is more complex than that. I wish Kelly, who wrote this little diatribe, would have heeded his own advice, for he does a lousy job presenting complex characters. Most everyone here is either good or evil, black or white. He loves the beatific Darko family, the progressive young teachers at school, and Gretchen (Jena Malone), Donnie's new girlfriend. He hates, and is unsympathetic to, Kitty, the little girl dance troupe that she exploits for her own ego, and the infomercial pitchman whose theories she buys into wholeheartedly. No scene holds a more pointed example of Kelly's inability to hide his hand, than an emergency PTA meeting. Called because someone has flooded the school and put an axe in the head of its mascot, it is inevitably interrupted by Kitty, who has discovered that an English teacher (Drew Barrymore) is teaching Graham Greene's short story "The Destructors". "Do you even know who Graham Green is?" asks a concerned mother. "I think we've all seen 'Bonanza'," comes the arrogant yet ignorant reply (from the same woman who nods passionately in agreement when a colleague proclaims ubiquitous punchline Dan Quayle the only Vice Presidential candidate worthy of her vote). Kelly didn't even have enough confidence in his good guys -- and by association, their quest -- to give them credible bad guys to rail against. Instead he offers villains whose actions are one step above twirling their moustaches menacingly and tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks.

In Kelly's defense, "Donnie Darko" was his first film. And to his credit, there is a lot here that is either very accomplished or shows potential. I did say that every time I watch the film it affects me in a poignant way, and now I'll tell you why.

First of all, it looks great. Kelly and crew, low budget or no low budget, have made a film that you can stand alongside any big budget blockbuster of the day, and it wouldn't look out of place. They even manage a skillful recreation of the living water effect first seen in James Cameron's "The Abyss". His camera work is ambitious (some speed shifting puts the audience off-balance when it needs to be put off-balance in a most effective manner) or simple when necessary. In a film called "Donnie Darko", one would expect that light (or the lack thereof) would be an important player. Kelly and cinematographer Stephen B. Poster use clean suburban sunshine in the daytime, and extreme darkness at night. The latter is often punctuated by blinding flashes of light, most notably the brilliant beam that presciently spews from Frank's left eye.

Kelly also does a fine job creating a plausible world. In one of the film's first shots, Mom Rose Darko (Mary McDonnell) is seen reading Stephen King's "It" while lying on a lounge. It's not the contemporary version of "It", however, the one with the pop-art clown on the cover. It's the '80s paperback, the one with the cover featuring a menacing hand coming out of the sewer. I read that copy when I was 13, and seeing it in this film brought back many memories of the '80s (my favourite moment: one of Donnie's friends shows up at a Halloween party dressed as Hulk Hogan!). Kelly does fine detailed work making sure the authenticity of the time period is maintained. From the clothes, to the conversations, to, most importantly, the music, everything fits the era to a T. He manages to get fine use out of not one but two Tears for Fears songs: "Head Over Heels" adds power to an effective tracking shot showing the treacherous ecosystem that is Donnie's school; a cover of "Mad World" adds melancholy, without adding melodrama, to the effective denouement (like I said, emotionally the film works, but it can't stand up to reason).

There are enough vivid and rich elements to Kelly's story that, like David Lynch had originally intended for his equally confusing "Mulholland Drive", "Donnie Darko" might have worked better as a full-season TV series. That way, all the elements that Kelly had to cut out for time and budget but wished he didn't, could be returned to their rightful place in the story. There's a revelation on the DVD's deleted scenes, not included or even alluded to in the movie, that clarifies a major element of Donnie's character. Without it, the film loses some of its meaning. Drawing out the mystery of "Donnie Darko", and allowing more time the tapestry of clues that Kelly intends to be vivid but aren't, could only improve the story.

Jake Gyllenhaal, as the title character, is asked, in only his sixth film role, to carry the movie on his back. He must play fiercely intelligent and puerile poignance, sometimes in the same scene. He must balance humour and pathos, wisdom and immaturity. But most of all, he must play a kid (Gyllenhaal was 21 but Donnie is only 16) simultaneously able to destroy and save the world. Gyllenhaal gets all of these aspects of his character just right. At times you can see him thinking his way through a scene, the intellectualization of the actor getting in the way of the instinctualness of the character, but he reins himself in just enough to not let it distract from his performance. If delivered in a film that grossed more than $10 million, Gyllenhaal's inevitable stardom would have come several years earlier.

The rest of the cast is, with a few exceptions, stellar. Noah Wyle, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, and Maggie Gyllenhaal all do fine work in small roles. Katharine Ross (who once upon a time was 'The Girl' in both "The Graduate" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"), who'd only acted once in the ten years before this film, is suitably cold but kind of uninteresting as Donnie's therapist. Patrick Swayze and Beth Grant deliver caricatures rather than characters. And Drew Barrymore, as a hip English teacher, has not the credibility or the presence to play such a tough-minded free thinker. I suppose if you have the juice to produce a movie, you can play any role you want, whether you're right for the part or not.

Overall, I'll give Richard Kelly the benefit of the doubt, and deign to recommend his film. Like I said, it offered me enough of a visceral rush that I've seen it multiple times, and look forward to seeing many times more. For all potential audience members, remember this: "Donnie Darko" will not make much sense, at least until you've done some further research into the hidden meanings of the film. Appreciate it as an emotional experience first, and its pleasures will fulfill you.

I guess I liked it after all…

THIS MAY NOT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE, BUT I'LL INCLUDE ANYWAY MY THOUGHTS REGARDING THE TWO PROBLEMATIC DVD COMMENTARY TRACKS (PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SKIP TO THE END)

Writer/director Richard Kelly and titular star Jake Gyllenhaal collaborate on the first commentary track. They obviously have a lot of passion for the project, and much mutual respect. Kelly, out of whose mind this story sprung, tries real hard to clear up any unanswered questions that his audience may have had. For me, his efforts were all for not, actually muddling whatever answers I had come up with, and in the process creating more questions (he also makes some absurd statements, such as his insistence that he watched Kubrick's "Lolita" beforehand, for a tonal model. I've just seen "Lolita" recently, and there was nothing about Kubrick's film that reminded me at all of "Donnie Darko"). Gyllenhaal demonstrates his youth with his contributions, relying more on silly voices and pointless shout-outs than on content. He does give some good insight, however, into how a serious actor must navigate around the cumbersome filmmaking process, in order to deliver a good scene. Although he makes a misstep in advocating the genius of his fellow actors (Mary McDonnell in the same class as Meryl Streep and Susan Sarandon? I don't think so…). Gyllenhaal was so good in the film that I feel kind of bad for ragging on his commentary performance, but there you go.

The second commentary felt more like a battle royale, with (if I counted correctly) no less than ten contributors. Most of the cast (Noah Wyle, Patrick Swayze, and Maggie Gyllenhaal being the most notable absentees) participates, and the proceedings more often than turn into a bloated mutual admiration society. Very few insights into the film are given. In fact, the conversation they have would seem less out of place at the script's first table read through, where themes and ideas are bantered back and forth, until everyone has a good idea what the film is about. As a commentary for a completed feature, Drew Barrymore's gang (she dominates the track; it might not be such a good idea for a supporting actor -- producer or not -- to have five times the amount of lines on a DVD commentary than in the movie itself) is entertaining, has lots of laughs, but is not informative.

Over the two tracks, Kelly proves himself either a) untrustworthy, or b) without any self-awareness. He makes several dubious statements that give the listener a false impression of the movie. A couple quick examples:

…While watching the golf course scene, he says that Jake doesn't blink once while confronting Frank the bunny. As soon as these words pass Kelly's lips, Gyllenhaal blinks. "Oh, maybe he just blinks there," clarifies Kelly, backpedaling like a madman.

…He claims, on commentary track 2, that Gyllenhaal does a good Chris Walken impression on track 1. Walken is the impression du jour these days, and Gyllenhaal doesn't come close to, say, Kevin Spacey or Jay Mohr's spot-on renditions.

…He claims that the film was "not meant to take sides", when clearly he is rooting for the liberal/democratic/youthful element, and hates the conservative/Republican/older element. There's even an obvious potshot taken at Dan Quayle. To me, Quayle no doubtedly deserves all the criticism he gets. But Kelly can't claim to have an objective, unbiased perspective when the right wing viewpoint so obviously turns his stomach.

These are some of the most problematic DVD commentary tracks I've ever heard. "Donnie Darko" is a good movie, with major flaws. It stands out on its own as a film worth watching, worth discussing, and worth most of its accolades. Kelly and Co. being effusive on DVD supplementary material, in a vain attempt to turn their cult hit into a cultural touchstone, smacks of desperation. Listen to the commentary tracks if you must, but be prepared to take everything that is said with a healthy grain of salt.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD