Donnie Darko
Richard Kelly

Emilie Bickerton

Donnie Darko is a strange and fun movie. Apocalyptic scenarios and superhero mythologies underpin Richard Kelly’s plot, but the debates it has provoked miss the point. Rather than simply trying to explain the storyline, we should ask whether or not Donnie Darko is really someone so admirable or inspirational to believe in.

Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s first film, has a lot of interesting twists and ideas, and a plot reminiscent of Mullholland Drive in the way its images and words resonate with each other. Its reception in the US provoked widespread frustration, but although there is some piecing together to be done afterwards, it’s hardly the incoherent mess it was denounced as. In the UK, critics were more receptive to the opacity of the plot, but their discussion remained centred on this point. ‘What the hell is it?’ a confused Peter Bradshaw asked about ‘such a strange movie’. Others offered their partial interpretations, and hailed the film as a ‘future cult classic’, considering its limited release in both the UK and US, and revelling in how difficult the film was to classify.

The plot is strange, and sinuous. There are a lot of phantom timelines, and crude symbolism which is never quite explained (Drew Barrymore’s cryptic quoting of Noam Chomsky, who considers ‘cellar door’ as the two most important words in the English language, still has me a little foxed; she is carrying an American flag at the time), and just who Frank the Rabbit is – man or illusion, remains a mystery. Still, this is the stuff of fun post-film chats.

The real controversy lies in Richard Kelly’s own vision for the film, and his title character: ‘maybe it’s the story of Holden Caulfield resurrected in 1988 by the spirit of Philip K Dick, who was always spinning yarns about schizophrenia and drug abuse breaking the barriers of space and time’. And in this sci-fi context, Donnie is a kind of ‘spiritual superhero’. He is the one who will save the world, the hero among a generation consumed by apathy and fear.

Two things must be considered before we hail Donnie as the Superman or Spiderman of the twenty first century. Put aside the fact that Donnie is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia (as extra footage from the DVD release of the film shows, he may not have been so ill after all: Kelly had previously included a scene revealing that the medication Donnie was taking to make him better was a placebo). Forget also that he has no extraordinary attributes (strength, climbing ability, nice red cape). His superhero credentials are more limited. First, an awareness of the world around him (he can see people’s liquid spears leading them through life, like a natural, benign God), and the refreshing ability to tell the truth about how scared he is in life, rather than live in denial of his fear.

Second, Donnie is asking genuine questions about the world, in stark contrast to the apathy of his peers. Is life chaotic, or are we at the mercy of fate? Are we subject to a course pre-set by God, or is there a way of escaping this? A human being grappling with the idea of living life without God, and trying to answer questions without short-circuiting the answer to His omniscience and omnipotence. Certainly refreshing stuff, and important when you consider the extent of religious belief in the US today, as a teacher’s t-shirt reminds us, sparkling out that ‘God is Awesome’ to anyone who can read.

But, ‘Every human being on this earth dies alone’ Grandmother Death whispers into Donnie’s ear one day, and the idea petrifies him. From the beginning we know Donnie is living on borrowed time. A 747 engine crashes into his bedroom, and luckily he isn’t there, but he soon learns that his escape is not as final as it seems. Donnie’s friend Frank jokes that he’s just wearing a ‘man suit’, insinuating that really he’s already dead.

This fear of dying alone is why he rejects God. Although Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze) is a wonderful parody of the seedy demagogue preaching clichés to make a few bucks (we must combat our fear and embrace love), the importance of fear in our lives is actually affirmed by Donnie himself. And effectively, Donnie’s eventual victory seems confined to overcoming Grandmother Death’s statement. He doesn’t die alone, but with Gretchen, his new girlfriend (who lives), and our last image of Donnie is of him laughing in bed, knowing the 747 engine which he escaped the first time, is coming, and just laughing. Overjoyed that he hasn’t died alone.

So this is the victory of our superhero? The evening before the apocalyptic scenario reaches its apogee has Donnie in a skeleton suit. This only adds to the thanatos (yearning for death) which underpins so much of the movie and makes victory the stuff of death, rather than something we can achieve in life. The title track, Mad World sets this up with the sad refrain, ‘I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad, the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had’.

During his final 28 days he follows a mantra set by Graham Greene’s The Destructors ‘destruction after all is a form of creation’. He floods the school, and sets Jim Cunningham’s house alight, revealing the dark secret of paedophilia behind the ‘fear and love’ man. At school he grills teachers on the possibility of escaping God’s path through black holes in the universe, and creates IMG’s with Gretchen – Infant Memory Glasses, which you put on your child to make sure that their images and memories of the world are of beautiful rather than tragic things.

What’s the point to it all though? What is actually created apart from a turning away from the real world. As a superhero, Donnie never really exists outside of himself. He continues throughout to be on the one hand questioning and critical, but on the other, firmly a part of the ‘Me Generation’ of the 1980s. The response to the problems of our world, in the context of this film amounts to little more than a great, personal escape through a (blasphemous) black hole.

So, call me old-fashioned but I like my superheroes to live, and maybe for their actions to have slightly grander achievements. If people find Donnie Darko admirable, even if they find the film frightening, and consider this ‘scariness [as being] rooted in compassion… you’re just afraid for Donnie’, the question remains as to why. What supposedly endears us to him

I wonder about Richard Kelly’s own ideas. The historical specificity of the movie is interesting. 1988, just before the Presidential election that would see Bush senior come into office. Kelly has said that this signified the end of the Reagan era, and the engine crashing down at the start ‘was a sort of a metaphor for that - a gong sounding the end of the 1980s'. But equally it could be a prophetic explanation of the apathy emerging at the time and obvious in today’s younger generations with the sense of continuity (Bush again), even stagnation at the highest level of American society.

And Donnie Darko an eighties version of Holden Caulfield? The point about Holden was that he was utterly lost and without purpose. Funny but tragic, fiercely critical of the world around him, and all the ‘goddamn phonies’ that filled it, but he held the humblest of dreams (a catcher in the rye). He chose to opt out, and you could say Donnie Darko has done the same- wearing a ‘man suit’ not because he was transcending his context, but rather, escaping it. He is somewhat less than human. It is a worrying comment on our times if we hail him as a superhero.

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