Donnie Darko – The Directors Cut Review

What makes you think I’m not a superhero?

Jake Gyllenhall

Maggie Gyllenhall

Jena Malone

Patrick Swayze

Drew Barrymore

Directed by Richard Kelly

Synopsis: In this eighties inflected, supernatural/sci-fi classic, Jake Gyllenhall stars as a troubled teenager experiencing bizarre visions after escaping death from a falling jet engine. His intelligence intimidates his teachers, but increasingly disturbing manifestations influence him to act upon destructive directives of a dark leporine headed figure.

When I first watched Donnie Darko (thirteen years ago, yikes!), I remember being blown away and utterly bamboozled about what I had just watched. The plot confused me, but I was really taken in by its charismatic performances and snippets of middle American, eighties school life. Not so much style over substance, but in Gyllenhall’s character and the creepy image of Frank the rabbit, I was hooked into the world, wanting to be Donnie Darko.

Jake Gyllenhall being only eighteen or nineteen at the time of playing Donnie gives a great performance, being able to switch between a slightly deranged disaffected teenager to tangential world/time travelling superhero in the heart of a beat. Opposing the Gyllenhalls, Jake and Maggie works incredibly well, trading on the natural rivalry that the pair have presumably been working on since birth. Donnie Darko initialises a snapshot of an American family contending with its older offspring exerting their angsty personalities on the family unit. This runs alongside Elizabeth Darko’s slightly feminist leanings and is an accomplished setup as there is wrangling, tooth and nail to get one over each other at the dinner table. The pair fight dirty as only siblings can. Despite the topically political and cultural references of the time in which it is set, the dialogue feels fresh and wins the characters endearment from the audience. This is a likable, unconventionally functional family with normal everyday problems.

“Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion” – Kitty Farmer

Except Donnie is on medication and undergoing treatment from a psychiatrist. Donnie sleepwalks, often waking in strange places with little memory of how he got there. The film never crosses the boundary in trying to convince the viewer of the truth of Donnie’s visions (real or imagined), spending more time developing its themes and making you like (almost) every single member of the cast. Despite its scifi/supernatural leanings, Richard Kelly as writer and director never loses sight of the teen drama connection dealing with everyday existential themes of isolation and disengagement, spending much of the film in the Middlesex school setting. A Tears for fears peppered soundtrack co-defines the period and setting of an establishing sequence in Donnie’s school. Long, slow motion crane shots that define the teacher and student characters – the cocaine snorting school bully, the somewhat powerless Principle Cole, the schoolyard performance by Sparkle Motion. There are occasional flashes of realistically vicious schoolyard dialogue from the school bullies. In reference to the character Cherita, a young Seth Rogen seers “Hey Porky Pig, I hope you get molested!” (This unexpected appearance from a pre-Apatow sculpted Rogen, made me chuckle in perhaps one of the very few serious roles I have seen him perform in). Its a world we have all been part of.

The film progresses in a somewhat moody tone, giving space to performances when it needs to explain Donnie’s understanding of his collapsing world and/or his apparently degenerating mental state. Donnie Darko feels accomplished in its ability to introduce philosophical elements and maintain real human engagement at its heart. Donnie’s confessions under hypnosis are affecting and at times, equally hilarious.

The director’s cut does much to answer some of the questions the film presents in terms of plot and its sometimes complex, deeper themes. The film is now intersected by chapter breaks with excerpts from Grandma Death’s/Roberta Sparrow’s book on time travel. Also signifiers of world/time changes are apparent in editing montages, giving a more straight-forward version of the film. If you are yet to see this film, I would suggest watching the theatrical version first and then move on to watching the extended directors cut. Extra scenes underline the more abstractly presented themes of the original release and cut deeper into Donnie’s science versus god internal conflicts as he tries to understand what is happening to him. Symbolic references permeate and there is a returning obsession with ouroboros in the form of dates and references to the number eight in its plot and conception. The film climaxes perfectly with the director’s cut extra footage explaining the initially confusing transition between the tangential worlds and wrapping the film in a much more complete fashion than its theatrical release.

Watching this film almost thirteen years after its cinema release, I still harbour a soft spot for the tale and the blur of its tangential worlds. And yes, I still want to be Donnie Darko.