Donnie Darko (Director's Cut)

Synopsis: Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an intellectually-gifted teenager receiving psychiatric therapy, who lives in suburban Virginia. He experiences hallucinatory visitations from Frank, a netherworld creature in a mutant rabbit suit with a bad attitude who tells him that the world will end in 28 days. One night whilst he is sleepwalking, Donnie's bedroom is destroyed when a huge airline engine falls out of the sky.  At school where he is regarded as a freak Donnie befriends new girl Gretchen (Jena Malone), his lifeline in an environment where everything is getting weirder and weirder.

If the synopsis makes this film sounds like a very silly teen comedy, it's not. When originally released in 2001 in the US, a month after September 11, this decidedly off-beat film bombed despite some rave reviews and winning quite a few indie awards for best original screenplay (and other things). Given limited release in the UK and other countries including Australia, less disconcerted by weirdness, it took off by word-of-mouth and with its elliptical structure, apocalyptic overtones, references to time travel and alternate universes, and its 6-foot-tall talking rabbit, it became a sure-fire cult film.

Three years later it has been re-released in a director's cut with an extra 20 minutes of footage and a new soundtrack and sound design. Perhaps because I already knew the story, perhaps because of the additional footage this new version seemed to me less enigmatic, more conventional and less engaging than the original version but that might just be me.

The script was written by director Kelly, based on a Graham Greene story, The Destructors which, characteristically of Kelly's fondness for parallelism, is itself featured within the film in Donnie's English class(Drew Barrymore, who plays the English teacher was one of the film's executive producers). Kelly transposes this story to suburban USA, sets it in the late 1980s and the result is one of the strongest teen alienation movies I've seen since Brian De Palma's 1976 classic Carrie. I'd venture that not only Kelly but cinematographer Steven B. Poster and composer Michael Andrews are familiar with that film for they manage to capture that same sense of foreboding by taking over aspects of the horror genre (there are various references to members of the genre, including Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead which is screening when Donnie and his girlfriend, Gretchen, go to the movies). I've not read the Greene story but assume that Kelly has added quite a bit to it, particularly in terms of characters but he has done so with finesse and humour.

Jake Gyllenhaal at the outset of what has become a substantial career is centre-stage for most of the film as the deeply alienated Donnie and he does it well, playing the part with empathetic understatement. He supported by a solid cast (no big names but they all look like you've seen them in other films) including an out-of-type appearance by Patrick Swayze (who you cannot help but remember you have seen in other films) as a self-help guru whilst Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jake's real-life sister plays his screen sister,. Elizabeth). Although, not surprisingly, you can see traces of many other American films dealing with suburban dysfunctionality and teen angst, Donnie Darko is sufficiently inventive and true to itself to be a welcome addition to the neighbourhood.

 

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