Subject: Review: Donnie Darko (2001)

From: Dennis Schwartz <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 19:36:15 -0000

DONNIE DARKO (director/writer: Richard Kelly; screenwriter: story "The
Destructors" by Graham Greene; cinematographer: Steven B. Poster; editors: Sam
Bauer/Eric Strand; music: Michael Andrews; cast: Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko),
Holmes Osborne (Eddie Darko), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Elizabeth Darko), Daveigh Chase
(Samantha Darko), Mary McDonnell (Rose Darko), James Duval (Frank), Arthur
Taxier (Dr. Fisher), Patrick Swayze (Jim Cunningham), Katharine Ross (Dr.
Thurman), Drew Barrymore (Karen Pomeroy), Beth Grant (Kittie Farmer), Jena
Malone (Gretchen Ross), Jolene Purdy (Cherita Chen), Pateience Cleveland
(Grandma Death/Roberta Sparrow), David Moreland (Principal Cole); Runtime: 112;
Newmarket Films; 2001) 

"The film was weird, but I mean that as a compliment." 

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz 

A fine debut otherworld film for 26-year-old Richard Kelly as director and
writer. It's about a mentally troubled teenager in a suburban California
community, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is caught up in time travel and
converses with an imaginary evil 6-foot rabbit called Frank who gives him orders
to do violence. It's a creepy tale covering the horrors of getting help for him
from a therapist who gives the wrong therapy, from a school that hinders instead
of helps his learning process, and from his parents who are clueless. In this
coming-of-age tale, satire and melodramatics are thrown together at random as
the story goes all over the map. 

In the opening scene we are introduced to Donnie' sitcom-like family, which
consists of his successful but disdainful business father, his baffled mother
who takes her son's schizophrenic in a false good-natured way as her burden in
life, his Dukakis voting older sister who is about to enter Harvard and loves to
get under the skin of her father and brother, and his bratty younger sister who
is adjusted to the pop culture world that rules suburbia. 

In the film's messy plot lines, a jet engine crashes in Donnie's room in early
October of 1988. It's a mystery to the FBI investigators since no such engine
was reported missing. It was also lucky for Donnie that he was sleepwalking once
again and slept out in the golf course. 

The troubled youth is marking off the calendar days, as he believes the end of
the world will correspond with the last day of October. Frank told him this, so
it must be true. 

Donnie is a very bright boy and can be polite, but he has an antagonistic
relationship with those he believes are intolerant. The exceptions are the
following: a sympathetic English teacher (Barrymore) whose lessons are from
Graham Greene's nihilistic short story "The Destructors," a story he is the only
one in class to grasp; a science teacher with whom he discusses theoretical
physics until the teacher curtails the conversation because he's afraid he will
lose his job by talking about this controversial subject; a recluse Roberta
Sparrow, whom he has nicknamed Grandma Death -- a former teacher who wrote a
book called "The philosophy of Time Travel" but now only stumbles out to her
mailbox waiting for mail that never comes; and, he has become smitten with a new
classmate Gretchen (Malone), who comes from a dysfunctional family -- her father
stabbed her mother and disappeared. The two share a sensitive nature and a
dislike for the school bullies and oppressive teachers. 

The therapy sessions with Dr. Thurman (Ross) run into trouble when he is put
under hypnosis and free associates and brings up sex, as this topic makes her
nervous. Thurman prescribes pills as a way to control his detached behavior from
reality, but the medication seems to make him hallucinate even more. 

The disturbed youngster gets hostile over an evil motivational speaker (Patrick
Swayze) who is interested only in selling his books and could care less that
he's feeding his school audience a pack of lies. An uptight gym teacher (Grant)
who in her ignorance wants to ban a book, also teaches a lesson about Fear and
Love being the only two emotions that count and has the students place an x on
an imaginary lifeline as she has them read something they must respond to.
Donnie gets suspended when he tells her to shove the lifeline up her ass. A
politically motivated principal (Moreland) who marginalizes education and is
afraid to take risks -- caters to the powers who hired him. 

When Frank speaks, Donnie listens. As a result he floods the school and burns
down a pervert's house. 

Donnie is able to visualize bubbly tunnels coming out of people's midsections
and therefore he's able to tune into different time periods and use these
visions to do some time travel. The film moves haphazardly from comedy and
social satire to being a sci-fi film, and some of these attempts add confusion.
But the film makes up for that with an insightful handling of Donnie's mental
problems. It could have just been another suburban troubled teen film, but it
instead takes risks, offers surprises in its plot, sets a very realistically
disturbing mood, and offers an ending that is so unclear that you might as well
make up your own. But to ape what Gretchen says to Donnie when they first meet
and she calls him weird in a complimentary way: let me say that the film was
weird, but I mean that as a compliment. 

REVIEWED ON 5/18/2002     GRADE: B + 

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews" 

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED   DENNIS SCHWARTZ 

http://www.sover.net/~ozus

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