My Favourite Movies: Donnie Darko (The Directors Cut)

I wasn’t exactly dragged to see this 2001 movie but it was close. For one thing I’d never heard of it or of its main star Jake Gyllenhaal but, bowing to her superior knowledge of all things culturally significant and ‘happening’ I tagged along with RCA to our local ‘Indie’ movie theatre. Being friends with RCA certainly introduced me to things I never would have watched or listened to without her influence. I guess that’s one of the things friends are for – introducing you to new stuff. Some of what RCA dragged me along to was crap – or at least I thought so! But not in this case. I loved Donnie Darko (the movie, not the character) from minute one – from when he woke up on a mountainside and rode his bike home to an 80’s classic.

After the film RCA and I, as usual, debated the film on the drive home. As with many of our rambling discussions we had very different ideas about what various elements of the plot meant and we were both articulate enough and educated enough not only to make our points but to return to them – for enjoyment – time and again. Of course the Directors Cut answered many of the questions we endlessly debated – which is why RCA didn’t like it, preferring the original theatrical version. But what about the story? Basically it’s this: Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a disturbed teenager who sees and hears things. He also sleepwalks (and cycles). One night early in October he hears a voice, gets out of bed and goes outside where a giant rabbit (called Frank) tells him that the world is going to end in 28 days. Next morning after waking up on the local golf course he goes home to find that an airline jet engine had crashed through the roof of his parent’s house and had landed in his room. If he hadn’t been out sleep walking he’d have died that night. To make matters more bizarre, if they needed to be, the serial number on the engine matches one on a plane still flying and no one can explain the duplication and no planes have been reported lost. In the next 28 days Donnie falls in love with a very cute newcomer to his school (Gretchen Ross played by Jena Malone), goes on a few destructive adventures directed by Frank, causes trouble in school and tries very hard indeed to get to the bottom of what’s going on in his world. After finally figuring it out he has to make a decision which could save everyone he loves – at the cost of his own life.

There is no doubt that this movie is definitely high on the strange scale. When I first saw it and spent some weeks thinking about it I came to the conclusion that some of it simply didn’t make sense and it was another one of those films that tried to be clever but, due to lack of substance or lack of intelligence, failed in its execution – that in effect the movie unravelled once you started investigating it (hey, I’m a Philosophy graduate – it’s what I do). Nice try, I thought. Of course then I watched the Directors Cut which made a whole lot more sense and I went from ‘nice try’ to ‘nicely done’. It certainly helped that this version left in the excerpts from the book ‘Philosophy of Time Travel’ written by one of the characters. I can see why they edited them out in the original (generally audiences don’t want to read during the movie) but so much was lost ,or according to RCA so much was left to debate, that some elements became unintelligible. There are some great scenes scattered throughout this movie but I’d hardly do justice to them all by only focusing in on a few of them. Needless to say that the acting was outstanding, and often surprising (especially from Patrick Swayze who blew me away) with very nice performances from Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell and Maggie Gyllenhaal who actually played next to her brother as his (fictional) sister. If you haven’t seen this, or it passed you by when it came out I’d recommend you look it up on Netflix – but root out the Directors Cut, it’ll cut down the debating time in your house by quite a lot!