The following article contains spoilers for the film "Donnie Darko"
Way back in 2001, the film "Donnie Darko" was released to a general audience whose confusion to the perhaps overly ambitious narrative marked it as an odd-ball cult film to watch because it was “so weird.” This reaction was to be expected from a movie that weaves time travel, mental illness, debated morality and supernatural happenings together under an atmosphere of dread. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the mentally unstable teenager Donnie Darko, whose disconnect from reality allows him to discern the date of the apocalypse.
Background to all of this is a feeling of American disillusionment, explored in this movie even before 9/11’s monolithic impact on American cinema that still lingers. Donnie is directionless, and without purpose he drifts throughout the movie, decrying what he believes are the falsehoods presented to his generation. Why should we have to accept these arbitrary rules, he asks.
Donnie is allowed to see the predestined paths of those around him, and though uncomfortable with the idea, he theorizes that maybe if he can see his path he can change it. This idea of predestination is at core of the movie — can Donnie escape what he views to be the prison of a dysfunctional American Dream (a phrase which in itself suggests unreality, contributing to the movie’s dreamlike feel)? This idea has been explored in countless other works, but here is different in how the supernatural elements allow it to be viewed in an alternative light, that by separating this ideal from its place, it can be more observable and critiqued.
The movie takes place during the 1988 presidential race of Michael Dukakis versus George H.W. Bush. Donnie’s father wants Bush for president, but his predestined path suggests that this may not actually be by own his choosing, and when his daughter announces she’s rooting for Dukakis, he shuts her down — bringing into play the powerful construct of the American household. Because many children grow to vote alongside their parents due to conditioning, this acts as sort of a predestined path that leads to establishment favorability. Past presidents such as Ronald Reagan are the object of the film’s frustrations and in one particular scene during a Halloween party, someone dressed as the former president acts a parody of “Reagan,” jumping around in a plastic mask on a trampoline. This suggests that these politicians are clowns in an already fixed system where they act as a ready-made product designed by a political party that the people can wear/follow ideologically.
The movie asks its audience to reject prophets with oversimplified solutions to life — “you are a product of your own fear and need to change internally rather than change external factors acting on you.” An Amnesty International poster hangs on the wall of the school, contrasting the time seemingly wasted there which instead could be used for a higher cause. Donnie’s English teacher wants her students to question conventional wisdom which gets her booted from her job by the principal. And so instead “what goes” for curriculum is a line drawn on a board with “Love” at one end and “Fear” at another and students are asked to quantify these abstract ideas by placing a moral circumstance somewhere on the line. Creating these black and white objects of love and fear play as an ill foreshadowing device for the Iraq War (which though a few more years into a future, it’s criticism is present in the film) in which the public was encouraged in very general ways to view the enemy as a Total Threat and to love a vague sense of nationalism. But this love asked of requires a certain brand of fear manufactured to begin with.
If "Donnie Darko" were a 2016 release, it would replace Bush and Dukakis with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. A prevailing case of defeat has fallen over a large section of the population when faced with the two options for the presidency. The odds of a third party candidate with ideas outside of the typical party systems is low to none because Trump and Clinton are so well established. This general feeling that votes don’t matter is mirrored in Donnie’s spiritual wandering and therapy sessions to find alternatives to a structured life that doesn’t fit his needs. A sense of acedia and doom prevails with the ever downward spiral of the doomsday clock which is constantly brought to the audience’s attention in big bold font.
"Donnie Darko" deserves a reappraisal as a depiction of American apathy in the face of a future that cannot change. But to define the film as young adult angst about the future is somewhat of a narrow view. As time runs out and the world is about to collapse, an air of euphoria for the future remains. Donnie realizes what he has to do: he can change the system by sacrificing himself [in a way this article won’t spoil] paralleling the "Last Temptation of Christ "which the movie takes themes from (and references). In this way Donnie finds purpose in a higher calling that transcends life of the contrived structure he was forced to live in. And so in the argument that the conclusion of Decision 2016 is predestined — perhaps the solution is not fixed, but a fatalistic attitude suggests a complacency that would render it so.
