Aging Disgracefully

An eery, somewhat unnerving film, it received unfairly harsh treatment from critics who generally (and inappropriately) insisted on judging it within the context of the more popular "Mulholland Drive." I think the better fit (if one exists) for comparison purposes is "Jacob's Ladder." Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal, in a brilliant performance) is a teenage boy who suffers from some unspecified but clearly worrisome psychological condition (paranoid schizophrenia?). One night in early October 1988, two startling events occur. First, he is called from his bed to the lawn outside of his home to receive instructions from a 6ft tall rabbit named Frank. Second, the engine of a commercial jet (or so the authorities surmise: its source cannot be located) crashes into Donnie's empty bedroom. The rabbit is a recurring figure, and from him Donnie learns two things. First, the end of the world will occur on Halloween night, 1988. Second, it is possible to travel through time. The second revelation resonates even more deeply with Donnie when he learns from his physics teacher that a former teacher at his school (now an old, eccentric neighbor known to local kids as 'Grandma Death' who spends her days visiting her mailbox, looking for a letter that never arrives) wrote a book on the subject, The Philosophy of Time Travel. The film is set in suburbia of the late Eighties (Donnie is from my generational and socioeconomic cohort; I have to say that the film convincingly recreates the look and feel of that time and place). It does an extraordinarily good job at making the ordinary somehow unsettling. Against the backdrop of Donnie's accelerating insanity, the movie also brings into question the logical consistency of our conventional norms of sanity as well as the uniqueness of Donnie's private hell (for instance, we indirectly sense the tortured inner world of a chubby, unpopular Asian girl who secretly loves Donnie). This is a complex, disorienting film, the conclusion of which is open to interpretation. However, it is essentially successful at drawing us into the hellish experience of a delusional person. Even time becomes warped in this setup. Its' authenticity partly stems from an insistence on avoiding the normal Hollywood conventions. For instance, Donnie is not, in the great film tradition of dark and troubled characters, a lonely outcast. His family and at least two girls love him, even as they struggle to understand the demons that threaten to destroy him. Indeed, he is actually sort of popular. In closing, I would also like to mention the incredibly effective use of Eighties pop music in establishing the mood. Examples: the emotional force of the ending, whatever it meant, is somehow amplified by Gary Jules haunting re-make of "Mad World"; the disorienting quality of a scene where Donnie's hallucinations begin to overwhelm him is rendered far more powerful by use of the song "Under the Milky Way." I'm not sure what this movie meant, if anything, but it is nonetheless a great, and pretty original, ride.