15 Years Later: Revisiting Donnie Darko | The Odyssey Online
Start writing a post
Entertainment

15 Years Later: Revisiting Donnie Darko

What Richard Kelly's one-hit wonder means in 2016

177
15 Years Later: Revisiting Donnie Darko
Gizmodo.com

Donnie Darko, released in 2001, turns 15 this year. The film only released to only $1,270,522 dollars in the box office according to boxofficemojo.com, but it has since become a cult classic. The film stars young Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal as brother and sister, Donnie Darko and Elizabeth Darko, respectively, and it also has veteran actors like Patrick Swayze and Drew Barrymore.

When Donnie is told by a talking rabbit, Frank, that the world will end in 28 days, he and his girlfriend, Gretchen Ross (Jena Malone), must figure out a way to stop it. Meanwhile, many themes are expressed by writer-director Richard Kelly, including fate, fear, and mental illness.

I first saw the film two years ago and was instantly in love with it. I just stared at the screen as the camera rolled by, perplexed by what had happened. I was enthralled by the themes, the plot twists; it fulfilled such a hunger I had at that point of my moviegoing life .

Then, earlier this month, I went back to watch it, and...it's complicated--like the movie itself. Before I go in depth, I should talk about what's really happened to the movie since it's released.

This was Richard Kelly's debut film, and, what seems to be, his only good one. Kelly has only directed two more films, Southland Tales and The Box, and they've received 36% and 45%, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. And, if you look at the selling points of Donnie Darko itself, the dense but heavy-handed themes have been shamed. For example, American Beauty, a film with some similarities to Darko, won the Best Picture Oscar for 1999, but has since lost what love it once had. Instead, people have gone to love more ambiguous, understated social statements. David Lynch's 2001 Mulholland Drive, a film with those qualities, was just called the best film of the 21st Century so far, according to a BBC poll voted by critics. As per the Oscar's, the Academy is going for more straightforward real-life retellings like Argo, 12 Years A Slave, and Spotlight.

And I really can't blame them. What I was once perplexed by with Donnie Darko, I then was bored and sometimes even embarrassed by. There are just so many outright messages it gets tiring. The "cellar door" scene, though impeccably acted, does nothing more than to just be set up for the climactic scene where Donnie and Gretchen enter a cellar door. The dialogue is awful and times, too. Although not expressed specifically by Donnie, the line "what's the point of life if you don't have a dick" would not be tolerated in 2016.

This time, I saw the Director's cut, which seemed to just awkwardly put up the starts of chapters of Roberta Sparrow's book The Philosophy of Time Travel along with obscure images like waves crashing against the shore. The juxtaposition is jarring but not in a good way, reminiscent of the nonsensical insert shots in Nate Parker's The Birth of a Nation.

Then we get to what seems to be the centerpiece theme in this film which is that of fear. Jim Cunningham (Swayze) is a self-help spokesperson who was made famous by his video "Controlling Fear", an awkward compilation reminiscent of other VHS tapes with bad transitions and the occasional boom mic cameo. There's actually a full version of "Controlling Fear" below:


Gym classes start teaching how to control fear with exercises for the class to do. One exercise is for a student to read a scenario and label in under the category "fear" or "love."


The other students do accordingly so, but Donnie protests when asked. "Life isn't that simple," he says. And this was the moment when I thought this movie isn't all that bad, and I might have only had that thought in 2016. We have a candidate who bases his platform on the fear of the American people. He wants to build walls and bomb whatever he doesn't know. However, as Donnie said, "life isn't that simple." To go off of that, there are no simple answers to things like this.

And to be released in January 2001, just a few months before 9/11, it's crazy to think how much fear has dominated our pysche. Even crazier is how the movie is about the anticipation of the end of the world, and, in a way, it did in real life. In the Nostalgia Critic's review of American Beauty, he goes on to conclude that the film is good to see now because it shows a dense, realistic snapshot of the much different time of 1999; we could see it for how it was back then. If anything Donnie Darko is like that, less from a nuclear family perspective as much as a societal perspective. 9/11 might have changed out country, but Donnie Darko shows us that it was only a matter of time before we got there.


Report this Content
This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
student sleep
Huffington Post

I think the hardest thing about going away to college is figuring out how to become an adult. Leaving a household where your parents took care of literally everything (thanks, Mom!) and suddenly becoming your own boss is overwhelming. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job of being a grown-up, but once in awhile I do something that really makes me feel like I'm #adulting. Twenty-somethings know what I'm talking about.

Keep Reading...Show less
school
blogspot

I went to a small high school, like 120-people-in-my-graduating-class small. It definitely had some good and some bad, and if you also went to a small high school, I’m sure you’ll relate to the things that I went through.

1. If something happens, everyone knows about it

Who hooked up with whom at the party? Yeah, heard about that an hour after it happened. You failed a test? Sorry, saw on Twitter last period. Facebook fight or, God forbid, real fight? It was on half the class’ Snapchat story half an hour ago. No matter what you do, someone will know about it.

Keep Reading...Show less
Chandler Bing

I'm assuming that we've all heard of the hit 90's TV series, Friends, right? Who hasn't? Admittedly, I had pretty low expectations when I first started binge watching the show on Netflix, but I quickly became addicted.

Without a doubt, Chandler Bing is the most relatable character, and there isn't an episode where I don't find myself thinking, Yup, Iam definitely the Chandler of my friend group.

Keep Reading...Show less
eye roll

Working with the public can be a job, in and of itself. Some people are just plain rude for no reason. But regardless of how your day is going, always having to be in the best of moods, or at least act like it... right?

1. When a customer wants to return a product, hands you the receipt, where is printed "ALL SALES ARE FINAL" in all caps.

2. Just because you might be having a bad day, and you're in a crappy mood, doesn't make it okay for you to yell at me or be rude to me. I'm a person with feelings, just like you.

3. People refusing to be put on hold when a customer is standing right in front of you. Oh, how I wish I could just hang up on you!

Keep Reading...Show less
blair waldorf
Hercampus.com

RBF, or resting b*tch face, is a serious condition that many people suffer from worldwide. Suffers are often bombarded with daily questions such as "Are you OK?" and "Why are you so mad?" If you have RBF, you've probably had numerous people tell you to "just smile!"

While this question trend can get annoying, there are a couple of pros to having RBF.

Keep Reading...Show less

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Facebook Comments