Time travel, existentialism, destruction and fear are all explored in Richard Kelly's cult debut film. Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is part of a typical suburban family, or so it would seem. He suffers from emotional disorders and the medication that he has to take results in him making imaginary friends. His latest friend is a man in a bunny suit called Frank. One night, Frank asks Donnie to follow him, so that he can share a secret with Donnie. Frank reveals that the world will end in 28 days, six hours, 42 minutes and twelve seconds.
At dawn, Donnie awakens on the local golf course and discovers that he has been sleepwalking. Returning home, Donnie discovers that an unidentified jet engine had crashed into his bedroom whilst he was away. At school, Donnie meets Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone), who has recently moved to town. The two soon begin a relationship.
Donnie starts to get visits from Frank, telling him to commit crimes, such as flooding the school and burning down author Liam Cunnigham's (Patrick Swayze) house. A basement containing child pornography is discovered by firefighters. This revelation brings much unrest to the small town of Middlesex. Donnie also starts seeing snakes of liquid coming out of the chests of everyone around him, which Frank explains is one aspect of time travel.
To find out more about time travel, Donnie goes to his school's physics teacher, Dr. Monnitoff (Noah Myle), who explains that time travel could be theoretically possible if an object traveling faster than the speed of light could enter a particular wormhole. He also gives Donnie a book on the subject, which Donnie discovers is written by a senile old lady who lives in an old house on top of the hill.
Donnie's younger sister (Daveigh Chase) makes it through to the quarter finals of a dance competition that will be held in LA. Their coach is unable to make it, as she is at Cunningham's arraignment, and she asks Donnie's parents to go to LA. They leave Donnie and his sister Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal) alone for the weekend. Elizabeth throws a Halloween party, that is also in celebration of her entry into Harvard.
Gretchen shows up to the party, distressed because her mother has gone missing. She and Donnie go for a drive up to where the old lady on the hill lives and are attacked by the school bullies (Alex Greenwald and Seth Rogen). They see a car coming and one of them runs away, leaving Gretchen to get hit by the car. Once the other bully runs away, Donnie shoots the driver of the car, whose name is Frank and is wearing a bunny suit. He gets Gretchen in the car and drives into the hills. Over his house a swirling cloud formation is formed.
Meanwhile, the plane that is carrying Donnie's parents and sister home from LA hits some turbulence and detaches one of the engines, which goes down through the cloud formation. This causes time to go backward to the beginning of the film and instead of Donnie leaving the house to follow Frank, he is crushed by the engine, thus ending his world.
Back in 2001, this movie made quite a stir because of the whole plane crash thing, which severely impacted on the fact that not a lot of people saw this film, which is a shame. They missed out on seeing a deep and meaningful film.
Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic as the haunted Darko. His character is dealing with regular teen troubles as well as these haunting visions. Other great performances come from Jena Malone as the troubled Gretchen and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the excitable Elizabeth. Drew Barrymore also makes a great appearance as Darko's English teacher.
The music in this film is superb mix of Michael Andrews' chilling score and rock and pop hits from the late 80s, including Joy Divsion and Duran Duran.
Verdict: Richard Kelly has created a haunting world and made a perfectly flawed character in Darko. He has made a simple theory behind time travel, whilst the actual mechanics behind it are still complex. Gyllenhaal brings his A-game.
No comments:
Post a Comment