YAY RABBIT

Whoever was supposed to do the review for this cult film apparently got smooshed by the deluge of homework, so I’ve wisely decided to ignore my own immense pile of schoolwork to knock it out. “Cult” is just one of the many words you can use to describe Richard Kelly’s debut feature which had to rely on DVD sales to make back the money they lost from the theatrical release. Part of the film’s appeal is it’s tonal recreation of 80’s America, and an armoured plot, so my guess is next to nobody knows about this movie in Singapore.

In my review of Galaxy Quest, I gave it props for sticking to its comedy guns through and through, as opposed to trying to shoehorn in other genres. Multi-genre films have a risk of screwing up on one or more fronts – it requires the movie to manage an extra-wide range of audience emotions. Done right, it’s a multi-coloured diamond of a show. Done wrong, it’s more like a clown with a really serious-looking beard. Donnie Darko (which is also the alliterative name of the protagonist) steers clear of the clown suit and into weirdly intriguing territory. The “main” plot involves enigmatic thriller elements and doomsday, yet this doesn’t take away from the other half of the movie that’s a family/high school drama.

You’d expect to read a cheesy name like “Donnie Darko” in a comic book, but our eponymous Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) is anything but a cheesy wounded guy. He’s an angry, confused teenager first and foremost, which keeps that suspension of disbelief intact even when the 12 foot man in a bunny suit starts appearing and talking about the end of the world. The movie does a good job of keeping us in Darko’s frame of mind – we’re always taunted by the feeling that there’s something important just under the surface, the answers to all the questions that inevitably pile up when things swing into uncanny territory. There’s a thinly sketched but effective ensemble cast here – the eerie old woman who never stops checking her mail, Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze) the pop psychology man who spews bullshit all over the high school, the mother (Mary McDonnell) who tries to do favours for the people who push her away, the obligatory love interest (Jena Malone), all parts of grand destiny against the backdrop of 80s America.

And when the film got to the end, the end that only viewers of the Director’s Cut are privy to, I sensed that all the loose ends and jigsaw pieces connected together somehow, that something came together into a whole, but I couldn’t put it into words. It just made a sort of sense, closed some sort of circle that left me feeling weirdly satisfied. Like the ending of American Beauty. Reading the internet’s explanations of the film added little to my understanding of the events. Some people find Donnie Darko completely impenetrable; the finale told me nothing and everything at the same time. Cult films: difficult for many, weirdly special for the few. One shot (spoiler-free) that has stayed with me is the one of the plane turbine flying through the air, surreal and beautiful. I couldn’t explain why that shot is stuck in my head any more than I can tell you why I like the film.

Richard Kelly hasn’t matched Donnie Darko’s success with his subsequent involvements, which makes me cautious of his 2010 project, a Vanishing Point remake. The orginal 1971 hybrid of car-chase, social commentary, and mysticism could be compared to Donnie Darko in terms of it’s undercurrent of surreality and multigenre appeal, but it’s before Kelly’s time, which means he won’t probably be able to recreate the era as well as he did here. Vanishing Point is one of those old movies which I feel could greatly benefit from a makeover.

by Chen Sing