...in the years since the film was made, the country and the world have become even more divided.... Maybe the movie is more meaningful today than ever.
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When this film first appeared in 2001, millions of other people and I welcomed it as a dark, often comical, mostly surrealistic venture into regions of the mind that cried out for personal interpretations on the part of every viewer. Much of the movie's charm was derived from the fact that it could be construed in so many different ways. What, after all, did any of it mean?
Apparently, that's what its creator, writer/director Richard Kelly, was constantly asked, too: What's it all about? So, he produced "The Director's Cut" in 2004, adding about twenty more minutes to the proceedings in an effort to further explain just what it was he meant in the first place. If you already own the original release of "Donnie Darko," this new Director's Cut is probably best regarded as an adjunct to it rather than as a replacement. On the one hand, it's nice to see and hear more of what the director had in mind. On the other hand, a good deal of the movie's mystery and the viewer's discovery is lost when things are explained too much.
What the potential viewer will want to know is whether the Director's Cut is worth the money. Well, fortunately for me, that's not my decision. I can only say that the Director's Cut is somewhat different from the theatrical version. Kelly did not take a bad film and make it better, nor did he take a great film and ruin it. "Donnie Darko" was already a good film, which in its new edition is simply augmented. It's probably the audio commentary and the second disc of bonus items that will be a greater lure than the Director's Cut for viewers who already own or admire the first version.
What Kelly does do in the Director's Cut is try to bring into focus just what is behind the main character's actions and what may motivate all of our actions, things only hinted at in the initial version of the film. First, imagine living in a world where nightmares and reality merge, where waking dreams are a part of everyday life. Imagine being visited each day by voices, beings, creatures, who could influence your present and direct your future. Paranoid delusions? Schizophrenic hallucinations? Dark forces? Space-alien abductions? It's the state that Donnie Darko, a boy in his late teens, finds himself in during the course of the grimly satiric, psychological fantasy named after him. In its abstract, often ephemeral themes and images, it's a film that even in its updated form will probably not find favor with everyone; but for viewers willing to put their disbelief systems on full suspend for a couple of hours, the effort can be uniquely rewarding.
If there's a weakness to both the old and new version of "Donnie Darko," it's that it strives to go in too many directions at once. It wants to be a dark comedy, a psychological thriller, a pseudo sci-fi/fantasy adventure, a social commentary, and a poignant, contemporary, romantic drama all at the same time. Its topics of teenage alienation and suburban anxiety, its "American Beauty" tone, and its wholly expected yet still vaguely unsatisfying ending seem often at odds. Nevertheless, one has to commend Kelly's ambitions, and I must admit I was mostly fascinated by both the old and the new versions of the story.
Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a bright, handsome, college-bound youth living with loving parents (Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne) and two sisters (the older of them played by Jake's real-life sister, Maggie Gyllenhall) in a comfortable, affluent, upscale neighborhood in the town of Middlesex, Virginia. As the all-American boy-next-door, you'd think he had it made. Instead, he's in therapy for pent-up anger, maladjustment, and all-around hostility. He is becoming increasingly detached from a world he finds hypocritical and uncaring. He argues with his siblings, calls his mother a "bitch," pops tranquilizers, and seemingly dreams of a gigantic rabbit named Frank, who tells him the world is going to end in twenty-eight days, six hours, forty-two minutes, and twelve seconds, which, not coincidentally, turns out to be Halloween. There's more going on behind the idyllic facade of Middlesex than meets the eye.
The year is 1988, an era in American history associated with rampant consumerism, an increasing disparity between upper and lower classes, and a general public unrest in matters ranging from economics to religion to "family values" (an issue co-opted largely by conservatives like Donnie's parents), all of which are targeted in the film. Bush the elder vs. Michael Dukakis campaign ads are seen and heard throughout the story to reinforce the idea of conflict. Interestingly, in the years since the film was made, the country and the world have become even more divided between those who think one way or another. Maybe the movie is more meaningful today than ever.
Donnie attends the private, ultraconservative Middlesex Ridge School, along with several kids named Bates (wonderfully silly if obvious references to sexual disorientation and Hitchcock's "Psycho"). The wacko gym instructor, Mrs. Farmer (Tiler Peck), also teaches an ethics class where she insists that her students see the world in terms of right and wrong, "love and fear." Meanwhile, she tries to get books banned that don't meet her internal criteria for "good." Then, too, the school promotes a self-help course taught by a clean-cut, New Age guru, Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), who makes a fortune off his inspirational, feel-good counseling program, his videotapes, and his television infomercials, but who has a secret lifestyle as well. Lots of subjects here are ripe for satire; and for a topper there's a motion-picture theater playing a horror double bill of "The Evil Dead" and "The Last Temptation of Christ."
But the film reaches deeper than that. In fact, everything seems to change for Donnie the night fate steps in. How much fate? A jet engine drops through his roof. From then on, events begin to escalate. Donnie starts dating a girl, Gretchen (Jenna Malone), whose life is almost as wretched as his own but who is coping with it much better than he is. He continues under hypnosis with his therapist, Dr. Thurmin (Katherine Ross). He meets a reclusive old lady, reputedly 101 years old, Roberta Sparrow (Patience Cleveland), known to the community as "Grandma Death." And he is advised by the rabbit (a perverted Harvey?) to do ever more destructive things. Finally, he undertakes to learn about the "Philosophy of Time Travel," a book written by the old lady, and he begins to wonder if the universe isn't going to collapse in on itself, and if it isn't possible to start everything all over again; or, indeed, whether somebody isn't going to start it all over again, anyway, with or without his cooperation. The Director's Cut uses a good deal more of the writing from Sparrow's book than the first movie did to help make more literal exactly what is happening to Donnie. That the new text still doesn't clear things up entirely is beside the point.
"What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?" Donnie asks. Maybe it's possible after all.
The movie gets weirder, funnier, sadder, and more tantalizing as it goes along; but it is not without its further oddities as it proceeds. Director Kelly opts for some peculiar filmmaking techniques throughout the story, sometimes at the expense of keeping his viewers' concentration on the subject at hand. For instance, he films Donnie getting off a school bus with his camera tilted sideways; later he speeds up his photography or gives us more curious camera angles. I suppose it's meant to visually demonstrate how distorted Donnie's world is, but I continued to find it distracting. In addition, all of the schoolroom scenes ring false, but since it's primarily a sardonic fantasy, I won't object. Likewise, the amount of drugs, alcohol, sex, and profanity among these teens appears excessive, but, again, I guess some exaggeration is necessary to make a point about the empty lives these kids see around them. As I say, by and large, there's probably still too much going on in the film for its own good, but if you can sort through the inessentials, there are some good pickings to be found.
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