In
embarking on the mammoth, open-ended project that is The New Cult Canon, I face
the scary and exhilarating prospect of a journey with no set course and no
planned destination, but there was never a question that I'd be leaving port
with Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko. To my mind, Donnie Darko is the quintessential cult movie of
the last 20 years: Here was a much-hyped washout at Sundance that fell to a
second-tier distributor (Newmarket), which released the film to middling
reviews and feeble arthouse box-office (barely half a million when all was said
and done). The film was left for dead until, miraculously, word of mouth
started to swell and an audience steadily grew and rallied around it. The
Pioneer Theater in New York ran it as a midnight movie for two years—this
at a time when the midnight movie itself had long been left for dead. And DVD
sales were so robust that Newmarket attempted to re-release the "Director's
Cut" theatrically. (It tanked a second time, too.) The
movie has inspired a level of obsession that separates cult phenomena from the
everyday hits that wither past opening weekend.
I saw Donnie
Darko three times
in the theater: Once at the press screening, where I was apoplectic to find many
of my fellow critics shrugging their shoulders; a second time during its
two-week run here in Chicago, where I saw it with maybe five or six other
people in the theater; and a third time at the Gene Siskel Film Center, where
it kept coming back month after month to packed houses, including the
near-soldout showing I attended. (And on a weeknight, no less!)
Why did I
and so many others keep shuffling, zombie-like, to see this movie again and
again in the theater? It certainly isn't perfect—films this crazily
ambitious, from a first-time director no less, are rarely flawless—but Donnie
Darko accomplishes
perhaps the one thing I value most in cinema: It creates a world to get lost
in, so particular and full of life that other concerns (in this case, an
overstuffed mind-bender of a plot that has never quite cohered for me) fall by
the wayside. And though I'll probably be defining cult movies a million
different ways in this column, that's likely the common denominator, because
once you have the ins and outs of the story figured out, what's the point of
seeing a movie a second or third or hundredth time? The world of the film is paramount. And
sequences like this one help, too:
If Donnie
Darko coasting through the suburb of Middlesex, Virginia on his bicycle as "The
Killing Moon" plays on the soundtrack wasn't attention-getting enough already,
the "Head Over Heels" sequence had me sitting bolt upright in my seat. In this
mesmerizing five minutes, Kelly introduces many of the major characters (and
wordlessly suggests the tension between them). More impressive still, he evokes the life of a late-'80s adolescent with a tone that hovers somewhere
between nostalgia and dread. It's very hard, especially when the soundtrack is
this irresistible, to revisit a period without making it seem like facile "I
Love The '80s" nostalgia. (Just ask Richard Linklater, who intended Dazed
And Confused—another New Cult Canon contender—to be suffused with melancholy, but
doesn't always get that response from viewers who groove on the music and stoner comedy.) But Kelly maintains that ambivalent tone from start to
finish, and for as much love as he displays for the popular music and movies of
the period, the film is still sobering, hypnotic, and more than a little sad.
Back in
2001, when the film was first realized, a wise man (okay, me) summed up Donnie
Darko thusly:
A dense
and wonderfully stylized amalgam of genres and influences, Donnie Darko resists any clear
definition, which is perhaps its most appealing quality. Is it the flip side of Blue Velvet, a
blistering satire of Reagan-warped suburbia? Or is it an anarchic, Fight Club-style punk film about
the impulse to tear down a corrupt world in order to build a new one? Is it
mind-bending science fiction? An adolescent romance? Catcher In The Rye?
Of course,
the film is all of these things and more. But it's also a case where the
individual parts don't necessarily work that well until they're factored
into the whole. As a satire especially, Donnie Darko takes a fairly broad, predictable indie-movie posture toward the Reagan '80s: Dad nearly spitting out
his dinner when his daughter announces she's voting for Dukakis; liberal
intellectuals (like the teachers played by Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle)
falling prey to narrow-minded conservatives looking to shake up the curriculum
with guru Patrick Swayze's New Agey baloney; a cartoonish Supermom (and chief
Sparkle Motion sponsor) who at one point dons a T-shirt that says "God Is
Awesome." As for the Holden Caulfield angle, or the enormously sweet
relationship between Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) and the new girl (Jena Malone,
always terrific), the film can only strike a glancing blow, since Donnie's
metaphysical journey overwhelms any deeper character-sketching.
And how
about that journey anyway? One reason why people might rewatch Donnie Darko is to figure out all that
mind-bending stuff about portals and wormholes and rabbit suits that twist up
the story so intriguingly. For me, the science-fiction elements are mysterious and
perhaps not altogether accountable, though I know I'm not alone in resenting
Kelly's attempt to iron everything out on the DVD commentary for the film. (And
on a related note: I have never seen the "Director's Cut" of the film, because
I didn't care much for the deleted scenes I watched on the original DVD, and
didn't want any more of the film spelled out for me.) For me, Kelly not tying up
every loose thread and explaining away the film's mysteries is a major plus,
though his fiasco of a follow-up, Southland Tales, proves just how easily a movie
like this can devolve into a clutter of half-realized ideas and references
masquerading as ambition and substance. Here, Kelly has the good sense to let
the audience connect the dots and advance their own theories and meanings.
Perhaps we
can hammer out the details in the comments section, but here's my general take
on it: When Donnie and his girlfriend go to see Evil Dead at the town's single-screen
theater, the other
movie on the marquee is The Last Temptation Of Christ. To me, this is the skeleton key
that puts the entire film in perspective: The whole of Donnie Darko is analogous to the infamous dream
sequence in Last Temptation, where Christ is on the cross and fantasizes at length
about the life he might have had if he rejected God's plan and embraced his
human side. The temptation is appealing: marriage, a home, making love (gasp!) to his wife, having children,
etc. Throughout the course of Kelly's film, Donnie comes to realize the tragic
consequences of him not being in his room when the plane engine drops through
the ceiling; as much as he endeavors to change the world and bend time in his
favor, he eventually has to reconcile to his fate.
Or
something to that effect, anyway. There are plenty of holes in that
interpretation without question—for one, it would never have been
revealed that Swayze is harboring a "kiddie-porn dungeon" in his house—
but for me, figuring the film out on repeat viewings has always been secondary
to simply returning to that world one more time, like a tourist. Kelly piles on
the '80s signposts—the amazing soundtrack; the nods to Evil Dead, E.T., Blue Velvet, The Karate Kid, Back To The Future, and Stephen King's It; the reactionary tenor of suburbia
in the Reagan era—yet they add up to a specific and deeply personal vision
of what it was like to be a teenager in October 1988. And for a guy like me,
who at that time was a 17-year-old living in Newt Gingrich's district (Cobb
County, Georgia), that's pretty fucking resonant.
Coming up:
Feb. 28: Morvern Callar
Mar. 6: Irma Vep
Mar. 13: Miami Blues
Mar. 20: Babe 2: A Pig In The City
And because
I just can't resist, I leave you with this clip, even though sometimes I
question your commitment to Sparkle Motion: