Donnie Darko and The Easter Bunny
What Was Donnie Trying to Say?
This movie confuses the ever loving shit out of me and I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s not so bad where I don’t ever know what’s happening and I look like a chimpanzee scratching its head, looking at a bunch of bananas. [But I’m 3/4 of the way there.]
“Cellar door”? A fucking rabbit suit?? Jake Gyllenhaal’s head on a prepubescent teen’s body???
What even is this movie about and what bigger picture am I possibly missing to make this make sense?
What I’ve deduced with my paltry film knowledge and my less than stellar understanding of science concepts and theorems is that there is, yes, time travel of a sorts that we see in this movie.
Whether they be in a time bubble or some sort of flashpoint or an alternate universe, I know not.
What I do know is that Gyllenhaal’s character Don Jr. has severe mental problems which may be a byproduct of his upbringing or the terrifying, inescapable, and powerful knowledge of a future he cannot change.
What must that feel like? To not understand a rat’s ass about what’s going on but feeling, deep in your gut, that something is wrong and no matter what, that something cannot be changed?
Donnie is troubled and acts out on these problems subconsciously when he’s asleep which mayhaps is a deliberate question as to how there is a whole life we live while we rest at night.
Even then we have to question: is it really him? Or is it the sadistic bunny in the mirror? Why is he acting out in this way? To what purpose does he have flooding his school and burning shit down and wandering the streets at terrible hours of the night?
There seems to be a method to his madness, but after living through the past few weeks in troubled and unregulated America, I find sympathy to be a lacking emotion for those who choose violence and anger over any logic.
But 2001 was a different time, and Donnie Darko has found a lasting cult audience to fan the flames of its altar.
Just what enthralled Donnie boy? And what makes it a classic for so many others?
These aren’t rhetorical questions, I’m legitimately wondering because I enjoyed this movie, and my TV broke immediately after finishing the credits and that paired with its dark themes is not something I want to revisit or browse the interwebs for answers.
If you know, please tell me. I’m dying to find out but not motivated enough to Google it.
Time Travel
I’m terrible with time travel. I’m terrible with time in general and moving blocks around on a calendar or fucking with the sequence of events in a movie only exacerbates my temporal inadequacies.
There are some solid movies dabbling in time travel and dabbles in it eloquently (like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Back to the Future) and a host of shows that twist the concept of time to their benefit and I must have you know that I am an idioT with a capital Tea.
[I’m well aware of my short comings not to be sidetracked by them but rather encouraged by them :D]
Time is so fickle.
As a concept and as a narrative element.
It’s easy enough to set a period piece, harder still to keep anachronisms from slipping through or knitting different times together to make a cohesive storyline.
Donnie Darko is like a flashback, but the titular character is unaware of it. He goes through the motion of life, piecing things together slowly, but inevitably, and he accepts his fate with closed eyes and a sigh of relief.
Maybe the responsibility of knowing too much breaks people.
Maybe the rabbit was a nod to the White Rabbit and his massive timepiece in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
Tick tock tick tock.
The clock ticks down for Donnie from the get-go but he doesn’t know what will happen when the final bell tolls.
The narrative is bookended by the airplane crash but the results is what differentiates the beginning from the end: Donnie’s drug induced meanderings from what seems like inner peace at the end.
Darkness Within
Looking at this movie holistically, it looks like a metaphor for the self and its darkest pieces.
Is Donnie deranged? Does he see things and feel things as we normally would as a fully functioning and mentally stable member of society?
It also calls into question what is real or not. Donnie has hallucinations caused by his medication or his severe lack of sleep. In general, he is a massively unreliable narrator and we have to take all his experiences here with a massive lump of salt.
The problem is that he is our protagonist. We have no choice but to follow him and go along with whatever actions he has planned. Anything we experience is being filtered through the grainy lens of Donnie’s existence and we have to deduce what to believe or not.
We also have to deduce whether the terrible things Donnie does or thinks he does are redeemable. We fear for him because he is scared and doesn’t really know what is happening and we have to ask ourselves, are these also things we would do at our darkest moments? Can we therefore justify the action and feel compassion for him because he is living the darkest truths of his existence?
He is being absolutely blasted by his conscience for what he does at night but he can’t put his finger on it exactly because to what purpose does it serve? He can’t answer that and I don’t know maybe we can because of our detached view on the proceedings.
So the story concludes and the credits roll and I’m left with a profound feeling. Of something. Can’t put my finger on it, don’t really want to explore what that means emotionally, but it does stir the feelings.
And I guess that always makes for a great movie.
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