Okay who understood Donnie Darko the first time they watched it. Really? Are you sure? Look, stop trying to show off and put your hands back in their “I’m superior to everybody else’s pockets.” Let’s be honest, on first viewing Donnie Darko is a baffling experience and one that confuses just as much as it delights. Richard Kelly’s bat shit crazy and incredibly cerebral directorial debut is a stunning piece of cinema that is impossible to fully understand without time to process its highly unusual structure and plot.
But just like fine wine, giving it time to breath and allowing its aftertaste to dwell on the tongue allows the ‘flavour’ to mature into something far greater than the initial ‘holy shit’ moment when you first see it.
Over the years no other film has wormed its way into my skull quite like Donnie Darko and I’ve often found myself thinking about its more confusing aspects and themes. While I may not be a physics professor, I have found that constant rumination (and the help of Mr. Google) is a great way to find the meanings of the things I’ve seen. So, without further ado here are some of my thoughts, insights, and observations on this amazing movie. Enjoy.
Before we move on be aware that major spoilers for the film lie ahead. If you haven’t yet seen Donnie Darko yet, then go watch it NOW… then come back here to learn more about the movie.
What exactly is Donnie Darko about?
That’s not an easy question to answer, but let’s try and break the story down into simple terms before we dissect it further.
On the surface, Donnie Darko is a story about a wide-eyed, naïve, and neurotic high school teenager called Donnie (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in his breakout role) who struggles to fit in with his surroundings. From the start it becomes apparent that Donnie suffers from paranoid delusions and his off-the-wall behaviour, therapy sessions, and medication suggest that he may suffer from paranoid schizophrenia.
The film begins on October the 2nd, 1988, in the small town of Middlesex where we meet Donnie as he is led out of his house by a mysterious voice towards Frank, a huge figure in a rabbit costume who tells him that the world will end in exactly 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. When Donnie wakes the next morning (on his local golf course) he finds that an aeroplane’s jet engine has crashed through his bedroom.
Over the next few days, Donnie continues to see Frank, so his parents send him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Thurman. Thurman believes that Donnie is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and puts him through a course of hypnotism.
During this period, Donnie also begins to see a girl of his age called Gretchen Ross, who’s moved to the neighbourhood with her mother to escape her violent stepfather.
After being prompted by Frank, Donnie asks his science teacher, Dr. Kenneth Monnitoff, if he believes in time travel and Monnitoff gives a book called The Philosophy of Time Travel written by a former teacher at the school.
Later in the film (after Frank has convinced Donnie to set fire to the home of a motivational speaker and apparent paedophile) Donnie holds a Halloween party to celebrate his sister (played by the ever dependable Maggie Gyllenhaal) acceptance at Harvard. During the party, Donnie realises that Frank’s end of the world is just a few hours away. He and Gretchen head to Roberta Sparrows (the author of The Philosophy of Time book) where Gretchen is run over by a car and killed. A distraught Donnie carries Gretchen’s body back to his home to find a vortex forming. Putting the cadaver into the trunk of his parent’s car, he drives to a ridge overlooking the town to see a plane get sucked into the vortex and the engine flying off into his house.
The previous 28 days then rewind, and Donnie awakens back on the 2nd of October where he begins to laugh as the jet engine falls on him. The final shots of the film are taken up by those who’ve been touched by Donnie and we see Gretchen riding her bike past Donnie’s house and exchanging a troubled glance with his parents even though she’d never met Donnie in this timeline.
And I bet you thought Donnie Darko was confusing…
Splitting Donnie Darko’s story into levels.
One of the first things you have to do to understand Donnie Darko is separate its surface story from the deeper meaning of what is going on. Yes, Donnie is mentally ill, but his visions are part of his ability to see into a parallel universe where doomsday is a distinct possibility and time travel is achievable. By addressing this outlandish premise head on, Darko the film manages to draw in a variety of themes about religion, love, sacrifice, sex, and even mental health.
If you view Donnie Darko as a treaty on the delusions of a paranoid schizophrenic, then you are missing out on so much of the movie. The top-level narrative of the film is a gloss on Darko’s world that only hints at the true nature of the film.
The book
The Philosophy of Time Travel is the book handed to Donnie by his science teacher, Kenneth Monnitoff (played by Noah Wyle). The book was written by Roberta Sparrow (played by Patience Cleveland) in 1944 when she taught science at Donnie’s school. The book serves as a bible for the films characters and helps them navigate the story.
During the film we glimpse the pages of The Philosophy of Time and its contents are discussed by the characters of the film. It is only when we read the excerpts for ourselves (by freezing the scenes or looking through them in the DVD extras) that the concepts within reveal their importance to the film. One of the most important ideas of the book is the two dimensions of the film’s story, which it refers to as the primary universe and the tangent universe.
The primary universe is the universe that Donnie usually lives in, whereas the tangent universe is a copy that forms due to a glitch in the Fourth Dimension of Time that happens just prior to the jet engine crashing into Donnie’s house. When Frank tells Donnie that the end of the world is in 28 days, he means it and the book explains this by stating that tangent universes are incredibly unstable and can form a black hole capable of destroying everything. While Donnie is in the tangent universe the primary one is on hold and when the glitch finally corrects itself at the end of the film, Donnie is transported back to the time of the glitch to be back in his own bed.
Donnie’s ‘mission’
Donnie has in essence been chosen as the Living Receiver whose mission it is to return the artifact (more on this later) to the primary universe. The book states that the Living Receiver is given “Fourth Dimensional Powers,” including telekinesis, enhanced strength, and mind control, but these come with a cost: the hallucinations that manifest as symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia in Donnie. It is these powers that actually allow Donnie to close the tangent universe and avoid the life destroying black hole, even though we never really see him explicitly use them (except for the hallucinations).
The artifact is the thing that can prevent the end of the world. In the film the artifact is the jet engine that falls from the aeroplane and crashes into Donnie’s house. In the primary universe, the engine is attached to the aeroplane and never comes free. In the tangent universe it falls from the plane and hits Donnie’s house. It is this disparity, in essence the creation of 2 of the same item, that creates the tangent universe in the first place and only by returning the erroneous engine to the moment when it split can disaster be averted. This is something that Donnie achieves with his powers as the Living Receiver.
How does the engine kill Donnie at the end if it never falls from the plane?
The engine does fall from the plane in the tangent universe and when it is returned to the primary universe we in essence have two versions of it — one that is still attached to the plane and one that falls on Donnie.
How the Manipulated living and dead guide Donnie
Of course, to get Donnie to close the tangent universe a rather unusual sequence of events has to occur. Some might say they are too random to have any significance. But again, The Philosophy of Time Travel (the bible) explains how this happens.
During the course of the film Donnie is moved into place like a chess piece by those around him. The book calls these the manipulated living (or dead if they are deceased). Every character he comes across push him closer to the goal of being in the right place at the right time to prevent the destruction of the world. Form the science teacher who gives him The Philosophy of Time Travel book, to Frank (both living and dead), every person is a pawn in a game they don’t understand and whose sole purpose is to allow Donnie to win. Who guides them we may never know but the subtext (and later interviews with director Kelly) suggest that some higher being (God?) is manipulating proceedings to prevent the end of the world. When Donnie returns to the primary universe he laughs and accepts his death knowing that he has acted as a divine vessel and has saved everyone and everything.
In conclusion?
There’s no doubt that Donnie Darko is one of the deepest films you will ever see, and its themes, contexts, and hidden meanings are hard to find and even more difficult to understand.
Even 20 years after its release, debates around Donnie Darko rage and you can still hear coffee shop conversations debating what the film actually means. Digging into the many twisting subtexts of the films script can only really only happen on (many) repeat viewings and until you do, you can’t claim to truly understand Donnie Darko.
