quote:

---

The following is culled from the Film's Web Site, the DVD Director's Commentary, the new Director's Cut, and "The Philosophy of Time Travel":


The vast majority of "Donnie Darko" takes place in a parallel universe. From the moment the clock in the Darko house strikes midnight, 10 minutes into the film, right up to Donnie's hysterical laughter in bed, the setting of the film is Tangent Middles-x, a parallel dimension, spontaneously created, which exists only during the 28 days that cover the majority of the film's action. The through-line of the film is Donnie Darko's quest to erase the Tangent Universe before it destroys the world.
To understand what actually occurs in "Donnie Darko," it helps to have read "The Philosophy of Time Travel," by Roberta Sparrow. This is difficult in that the book is an imaginary one, written by a fictional character. Luckily, much of the book's text is included on the film's Web site and DVD and is now incorporated into the director's cut.
"The Philosophy of Time Travel" explains that time, while usually stable, will occasionally become corrupted for reasons unknown to all. When this happens, a Tangent Universe is created -- an alternate reality parallel to the primary universe in which we all live. "If a Tangent Universe occurs," Sparrow writes, "it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself for no longer than several weeks. Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence." During that collapse, a time-space vortex will form that leads back to the birth of the Tangent Universe.
In a nutshell, this is precisely what the hell happens in "Donnie Darko." At midnight on Oct. 2, 1988, a Tangent Universe is spontaneously created, centered in Middles-x, Va. This Tangent Universe threatens the existence of life as we know it; it falls to one person to do whatever necessary to put the world back in order and keep the Tangent Universe from destroying the real world when it collapses in 28 days. That person -- that superhero -- is, of course, Donnie Darko: a 16-year-old with emotional problems, a history of arson, and bedroom eyes.
The Artifact
Hand in hand with the creation of a Tangent Universe, writes Roberta Sparrow, is the spontaneous appearance of an Artifact. Made out of metal, this artifact will inexplicably show up near the epicenter of the Tangent Universe; in order for disaster to be averted, the Artifact must be sent through the time vortex back to the Primary Universe -- back to before the split in dimensions occurred. The Artifact in Tangent Middles-x, of course, is a gigantic freaking jet engine that falls out of the sky.
The Living Receiver
That's Donnie, in the words of "The Philosophy of Time Travel": the Living Receiver. He's the chosen one, picked (seemingly at random) to return the Artifact to the Primary Universe in order to avert catastrophe. Being the Living Receiver has advantages and disadvantages: You get superpowers, like strength, telekinesis and the ability to see into the future, but you also get horrifying hallucinations and the people around you tend to fear and attack you.

The Manipulated
This refers to pretty much everyone else in the movie. "They are prone to irrational, bizarre and often violent behavior," writes Roberta Sparrow, because their entire raison d'être is to help the Chosen One fulfill his task. Which is to say that every other character in the movie has been set up like a piece on a chessboard, ready to behave in the exact perfect way necessary to push Donnie toward his eventual destiny -- returning that jet engine to its proper time and place in the Primary Universe. Nearly every event in the film, when viewed in this way, has a specific purpose; together the events create an inexorable chain of coincidence and consequence designed to make Donnie's fate inescapable.

All this mumbo-jumbo, of course, skirts the big question: Chosen by whom? Manipulated by whom? The movie leaves that ambiguous, but it seems clear from comments Kelly makes during the DVD commentary that the person in charge here is, basically, God. When the Middles-x Tangent Universe is spontaneously created, God arranges the people in that Tangent Universe around Donnie Darko in such a manner that their actions lead inevitably to Donnie's delivering the jet engine back through time.

Hardly any of that stuff was in the movie.
That's true. Many of my friends complain that to understand "Donnie Darko," a viewer needs to watch the movie and listen to the DVD commentary and crack the Web site. In an interview, Kelly has said that he created the pages from "The Philosophy of Time Travel" as an exercise in interpretation and that they are not intended to be read as canon; nonetheless, his inclusion of many book excerpts in his director's cut suggests that his feelings on the matter have changed and he intends them to be definitive. (Incidentally, this might be the first time that a director's cut includes large chunks of material lifted directly from the film's Web site.)
Couldn't you interpret this whole movie in another way, without any sci-fi stuff at all? As sort of a subjective rendition of Donnie's descent into paranoid schizophrenia?
Absolutely. A number of my friends read the film this way and feel it is a far more interesting interpretation of the events of "Donnie Darko" than the dominant sci-fi narrative. Certainly aspects of the film -- the flatness of affect in Donnie's meetings with Frank, Donnie's increasing menace and the way the mechanics of the plot revolve so explicitly around typical teenage s-xual hang-ups -- support a reading of the film as Donnie's Descent, shown from inside his head. Even the careful tying-together of the plot doesn't necessarily negate this read; one trait of the budding schizophrenic is the creation of coherent, if unlikely, narratives tying together the hallucinations and paranoia often manifested as part of the illness.
That said, I'm not dealing too much with this read in these Cliffs Notes because it seems to me that through his supplementary materials and his director's cut, Richard Kelly is pushing viewers to accept the primary narrative -- the sci-fi, Tangent Universe narrative -- as the "proper" way to interpret the film. We can argue all day about whether Kelly's decision is clarifying or foolishly reductive. Many of my friends think that the film is far richer as an exploration of madness than as an "Escher thriller about freaking wormhole bullsh-t," as one friend so succinctly put it. Conversely, I myself am much more interested in watching a clever sci-fi flick with good '80s tunes than another inside-the-nutcase's-head movie, and so I'm perfectly happy to have Kelly attempt to clarify the intentions of his plot a bit. Kelly himself has spent years crowing about his film's careful ambiguity, so I'm interested in why he made the additions he did to the director's cut, additions that serve primarily to make the film far less ambiguous.
I still think that my interpretation is valid, man.
Of course it's valid. Don't take it personally. We're all relativists here.
What's with the 6-foot-tall rabbit?
Well, that's as good a place to start as any. Frank (played, in fur coat and out, by James Duval) is the boyfriend of Donnie's sister Elizabeth. (It's he who drops her off just before the jet engine fiasco.) Frank himself never meets Donnie until their fateful encounter on Halloween eve. The Frank who speaks to Donnie on the golf course and elsewhere is a kind of ghost Frank -- a remnant of Frank who, because Donnie shoots him in the eye within the Tangent Universe's 28 days, can move freely in time throughout the Tangent Universe. Frank's purpose -- for he's been chosen, as surely as Donnie has -- is to serve as Donnie's guide through the Tangent Universe, leading him toward clues and offering tasks that will smooth Donnie's way toward his goal.
According to Roberta Sparrow's book, Frank is an example of the Manipulated Dead. Apparently, those who die within the confines of the Tangent Universe are given some level of knowledge of the catastrophe to come and serve to some extent as the Chosen One's guide. There seems to be some variation in the level of understanding given to the Manipulated Dead; Gretchen, for example, the other Manipulated Dead, seems to have an inkling that something terrible is going to happen but clearly doesn't have the detailed comprehension Frank does. Nor does Gretchen's spirit appear to Donnie behind any kind of watery barrier. Nor does she dress up in a bunny suit.

Yeah, what's up with that bunny suit?


Donnie meets the real Frank -- not his Manipulated Dead specter -- for the first time on Halloween eve, with Frank in costume. But it's also an allusion to "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" -- just as the White Rabbit leads Alice down the hole into her great adventure, so does Frank lead Donnie into his own. Rabbit imagery abounds in "Donnie Darko," from a VW Rabbit driving down the streets of Middles-x to stuffed bunnies to a photograph of toddler Maggie Gyllenhaal next to a kid in a rabbit suit to (in the director's cut) an extended subplot revolving around Richard Adams' rabbits-in-peril novel "Watership Down."

OK, I still don't get it. How exactly does Donnie deliver the jet engine back through time? I get that there's a time portal or whatever above his house, and the jet engine falls through it, but it seems like it just falls off his mom's plane for no reason.
I couldn't figure this out at all, but, thank God, Kelly explains it on the DVD commentary. In addition to his super strength and super future-sight and super sulking power, Donnie has the power of telekinesis. He rips the engine off the plane himself.
Oh. I didn't get that.
I don't know anyone who did.
Why does he do that?
Well, he's basically railroaded into it. Previous events -- his conversations with Dr. Monnitoff, his reading of Roberta Sparrow's book -- have made it clear to Donnie what is going on, and he pretty much knows what he is supposed to do. But he's spurred on most directly by the events of the previous evening. Once he has killed a person and seen his girlfriend die before his eyes, he feels he has no choice but to send time backward -- to telekinetically rip off the engine, send it through the time vortex, and fulfill his destiny as the Living Receiver. (Sparrow's book refers to this as an Ensurance Trap, a snare created by the Manipulated Dead -- in this case, Frank and Gretchen -- to make absolutely sure that the Chosen One does his job.) Donnie believes that if he does what he's supposed to, this Tangent Universe he's in will disappear and it will be as if the past 28 days never happened -- Gretchen and Frank will still be alive.
But doesn't he know that if he sends the jet engine back in time, and it lands on his house, but he's back there on Oct. 2 in a regular universe with no Frank calling him out of bed, he'll get squashed like a bug?
Impaled, actually, as seen in a gruesome deleted scene on the DVD. It's hard to tell whether he knows this or not. His hysterical laughter at the end of the movie suggests he knows something's up. Sparrow's book notes that many of the Manipulated will see the events of the Tangent Universe in their dreams. So we can assume that at midnight on Oct. 2 in the Primary Universe, Donnie Darko wakes up from an exceptionally detailed dream in which he developed superpowers, got lucky, burned down a pervert's house, and discussed the s-xual habits of Smurfs with his friends. Whether he understands the dream is uncertain; I think he does but chooses, due to all he's seen and his worries about repeating the mistakes of the Tangent Universe, to stay in bed and take a jet engine right in the kisser.
Interestingly, Kelly suggests in the DVD commentary that the car horn we hear as Elizabeth comes in the door is Frank's -- that he's honking not as a message to Elizabeth, but as one to Donnie. Perhaps Frank at that second realizes everything that happened in the Tangent Universe, and knows what is about to happen, and attempts to wake Donnie up and get him out of bed before the sky falls?
Also interestingly, this means that once again an extremely complicated film can be basically explained as being a representation of the dream a troubled character has just before death.
People remember the Tangent Universe in dreams? Is that why we saw everyone looking sad in bed?
Yeah. And Jim Cunningham is crying because he realized what a total perv he is. According to the film's Web site, he shoots himself 10 days later. The Web site has all kinds of fun tidbits: The FAA never figures out where the engine came from. Roberta Sparrow finally dies in December 1988. And Dr. Monnitoff marries Ms. Pomeroy; when he dies under suspicious circumstances in 1999, she sends his copy of "The Philosophy of Time Travel" to the Library of Congress with a cryptic note. Check it out, but be warned it's one of those annoying mysterious Web sites that take a week to figure out; look here for a step-by-step walkthrough.
The s-xual habits of Smurfs?
Yeah! According to the DVD commentary, the estate of Peyo, creator of the Smurfs, allowed Kelly to keep this very funny scene in the movie because Donnie's description of Smurf s-xuality is perfectly accurate.

So how are all the Manipulated manipulated?
The Manipulated do irrational or unexpected things with consequences that inevitably push Donnie toward his fate. Consider the film's climax, the deaths of Gretchen and Frank. It's fascinating to see all the choices by various Manipulated that get Donnie outside Grandma Death's house on that fateful night -- and cause him to be so devastated by the deaths of Frank and Gretchen that he is willing to destroy the universe in which he finds himself just to undo those deaths.

How does Donnie meet Gretchen? Well, on Gretchen's first day of school, Ms. Pomeroy behaves strangely, giving Gretchen that not-approved-by-the-Board-of-Ed directive to sit next to the boy she finds the cutest. And then Frank helps them become better acquainted by getting Donnie to break that water main. Remember? "I'm really glad school was flooded today," Donnie says, because otherwise, "you and I would have never had this conversation."

How does Donnie know to communicate with Roberta Sparrow? Dr. Monnitoff talks time travel with him and gives him a not-approved-by-the-Board-of-Ed book to read.
How does Donnie know to look in Grandma Death's cellar? Ms. Pomeroy's out-of-left-field invocation of the phrase "cellar door."
The two thugs' weird idea to rob Grandma Death sends Donnie and Gretchen into the road. Mrs. Sparrow -- who'd refused to answer the door when Donnie previously called on her -- is reading Donnie's letter when Frank's Trans Am swerves around her and runs over Gretchen.
Why does Donnie love Gretchen so much that he's willing to shoot Frank in retaliation, willing to erase the universe to bring her back to life? Well, because of their deep emotional connection, sure, but also because they just made love for the first time. And why do they make love? Gretchen's stepdad, we're led to believe, irrationally attacks Gretchen's mother, leading Gretchen tearfully to Donnie's door and into his arms.
And why is Frank there at all? Because he left a party where he could've been making out with Maggie Gyllenhaal in order to buy beer, even though the party already had a keg. The behavior of an 18-year-old guy doesn't get much more irrational than that.
What other irrational behavior do the Manipulated exhibit?
Well, Donnie gets driven to his misbehavior by Mrs. Farmer's moronic adherence to the cult of Swayze. Said misbehavior gets him suspended from after-school activities; that's why he can't attend the talent show and is instead free to torch Cunningham's house. Once Cunningham is exposed as a panderer, Mrs. Farmer can't go to L.A. with the Sparkle Motion girls, so Donnie's mom goes, so the house is devoid of parents, so the Gyllenhaals can throw a party. And since Donnie's mom had to go to L.A., she's on the plane when the engine comes off, and ... um ... actually, I still have no idea why she had to be on that particular plane. That makes no sense at all.
Oh, and of course, everyone thought Sam Raimi was crazy when he made "The Evil Dead," but he irrationally did it anyway, and that movie was Donnie's and Gretchen's only date.
Who are the fat guy in the tracksuit and the mysterious woman with the clipboard?
He's one of the FAA employees we see near the beginning and end of the movie. Apparently the FAA is so freaked out by the jet engine weirdness that they've sent their tackiest agent to keep an eye on the Darko family.
She is a talent scout for Ed McMahon's "Star Search '88."
What does it mean that Donnie's medication is a placebo?
This scene, which appears in the director's cut, is another hint from Kelly that he doesn't think Donnie's crazy. Dr. Thurman doesn't fully understand what's going on, but like so many of the other characters, she recognizes that something momentous is in the air and that Donnie seems to be in the middle of it, whatever it is.
What's the story with "cellar door"?
Ms. Pomeroy's vague attribution of the quote to a "famous linguist" was, I assume, mandated by the legal department; it's hard to get a handle on who first claimed those two words to be the most beautiful in the English language. I've seen it attributed to Pound, Poe, Tolkien, Mencken and a Chinese student of Mencken's who knew no English.
What does that creepy thing Grandma Death whispers have to do with anything?
I think it's telling how scared Donnie seems when he discusses her notion that "every living creature on earth dies alone." As the Tangent Universe draws to a close, Kelly is careful to give Donnie moments of reconciliation with nearly everyone important to him: his mother (in a sweet scene up in his room), his father (in a director's cut scene in the backyard, one of the nicest additions to the new version) and Gretchen (during the Halloween party). A friend of mine pointed out that another way of interpreting Donnie's smile as he settles into bed, just before he gets engined, is that he is pleased about the circumstances of his onrushing death. He was afraid of dying alone, without a connection to God or anyone? Well, following "God's channel," he has known love for the first time and has been given a chance to sacrifice himself for the love of Gretchen and his family and everyone. He knows he is about to die, but he doesn't feel at all alone.
What's with those weird blobs leading out of everyone's stomachs?
They're a visual representation of the future, inspired, Kelly said, by watching John Madden operate the CBS Chalkboard Telestrator on NFL broadcasts. Included among Donnie's many superpowers is the power to see the future. Donnie and Dr. Monnitoff have a discussion in which Donnie asks whether this representation suggests there's no such thing as free will. Dr. Monnitoff says that just because you see your future doesn't mean you have to follow it, but Donnie seems to believe that the future blobs represent "God's channel."
The film comes down pretty firmly against the concept of free will, at least in Tangent Universes. But that leads to a daunting question...
Why all the rigmarole? If no one in this Tangent Universe has free will -- and if God or whoever can make them act irrationally and do whatever He wants -- why did this whole scheme to get the jet engine off the plane have to be so complicated? It seems like a stupid way to save the universe, in the sense that anything could have gone wrong at any step. Why couldn't Whoever was in charge just make Donnie sleepwalk into the hills on Oct. 30 and use his superpowers to knock the engine off the plane? In the whole scale of things, that doesn't seem more irrational than some of the other irrational things characters do throughout this movie.
That's the exact daunting question to which I referred. It all seems very baroque, doesn't it, reminiscent of the overcomplicated plans hatched by villains in potboilers since the beginning of time. (My wife asks: If Voldemort needs Harry's blood so bad, why do they have to rig the entire Triwizard Tournament to get it? Why couldn't Fake Mad-Eye just, like, send Harry to the infirmary for a Magical Mumps blood test?)
There's no good answer to this question -- why does God or Whoever make saving the universe so complicated? -- other than the obvious one. If saving the universe was as easy as all that, what a boring movie that would make, right?

---

whew...that was a pretty interesting read...anyone knows a theater around here that plays Donnie Darko: Director's Cut ?

Pretty interesting.

D Cut was mostly big cities, alas. From what I understand, this film sets the bar of films that bombed in the theatre but made a killing on DVD sales.

I actually watched the film this evening (the original version).

One thing that stood out in the film, was at the end. When the family members were watching Donnie being "carted" away, all but the mother were crying/sad. The mother was unmoved, as if she knew the event was to happen.

My favorite movie of all time. I saw the Director's Cut about a month ago. It was in Gainesville for a week. It's pretty good, though I prefer the original. I'm just glad the film got a 2nd life and more and more people have found it and enjoyed it.

Well I figured out why the mother was unmoved at the end of the movie. According to the website, once the manipulated take their journey from the Tangent Universe to the Primary Universe, they dream all that has happened in the Tangent Universe. The mother was able to make sense of Donnie's odd behavior and why it was necessary.

My husband begged me to watch DD, and I'm glad I did. While "odd," I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, after reading this...I'm itching to see the Director's Cut. Thanks for some of the enlightening!

I really enjoyed the original, and I bought it when it came out on dvd, which came complete with deleted scenes-- Is the directors cut just the insertion of those deleted scenes or is it something else entirely??

I really liked the original version and want to get the director's cut on DVD to check out the extras mentioned here.

I actually thought of the movie originally (without reading any background info. or hearing director interviews) as a cross between the sci-fi wormhole movie and the schizophrenic psycho dream movie the writer mentions as the two options above. I could see some of both in my understanding of the movie.