NOTES ON DONNIE DARKO

THE TIME LINE

FOLLOW THE TIME LINE DOWN UNTIL THE LINE SPLITS IN TWO:
(September 30-not shown, implied) Donnie leaves the house at night and goes off on his bike.
Saturday ,October 1 He wakes up on a mountain road while watching the sunrise.
(His parents notice that he is out and write "Where's Donnie" on the white board.
He bike rides home to the city. He passes early morning joggesrs. Donnie's father is using the leaf blower. Samantha is on the trampoline. Elizabeth is taking the car out. He goes in the back through the patio where his mother is reading It by Stephen King. Donnie notices the white board.
... [cut to dinner scene]
The family eat dinner together
His father wakes up to watch the rebroadcast of the Presidential debates. He falls asleep in front of the television.
THE DAMNED LINE	THE REDEEMED LINE
OCTOBER 2 Frank tells Donnie to leave the house	OCTOBER 2 Donnie remains in his bedroom
The car drives up and Elizabeth comes home The plane crashes into his bedroom.	The car drives up and Elizabeth comes home. The plane crashes into his bedroom.
Donnie is out. His father wakes up.	Donnie is killed and his father wakes up.
Donnie wakes up on the golf course. The serial number of the plane is written on his arm.
He returns to his house in the morning	The Darko family is distraught. FAA, FBI and other assorted agents surround the house to investigate.
[...]
Donnie floods the school.
[...]
Donnie burns down Jim Cunningham's house.
[...]
OCT. 30: Donnie and Gretchen are together at the party. Afterwards, they ride bikes to Roberta Sparrow's
Gretchen is run over with a car
The plane loses its engine. The engine travels back in the worm hole to fall on Donnie's house on October 2.
Donnie goes back in time before the engine has crashed on his room.

The movie assumes that we already understand particular conventions about story-telling. Even though a story is a fictional form, there is a level of fantasy. A character may enter a dream and be engaged by all its events. But in waking from a dream, he may recognize the dream as essentially an illusion. Stories such as "A Christmas Carol" and It's a Wonderful Life, invite the audience into a fantasy world of the characters. The characters can walk through an alternative reality and recognize what might happen if they continue along their present path. The stories act as warnings to the characters and to the audience. Moreover, some elements of these fantasy worlds may become part of everyday in the form of supernatural forces.

Donnie Darko uses the conventions of story-telling in just this vein. The film maker informs us of the rules whereby the supernatural can influence our experience.

FRANK
Frank is an actual character in the story. He is the one sent on a beer run at the party and on his way back he hits Gretchen with his car. In reaction, Donnie kills Frank. Particularly, due to Frank's earlier revelations, Donnie is convinced that this is no mere accident on Frank's part. But the Frank of Donnie's bewildered imagination is not exactly the same Frank of this scene. Due somewhat to the conditions of the worm hole and its effect on the time line, Frank assumes a ghostly form that haunts Donnie's past. This image serves as Donny's psychic guide in his confrontation with the phenomenon of time travel.

The film offers an extended metaphor of Donnie's alienation. His apparent disassociation from reality and his hallucinations express his radical feelings of separation from his school community and from his family. On the one hand, he feels all powerful somewhat inspired by his realization about how so many people, parents and teachers, engage in a form of mind control. On the other hand, there is a deep frustration about his experience, made all the more extreme by his insight. The appearance of Frank offers him a sense of confidence that he will not get overwhelmed by his environment. At the same time, he follows Frank's suggestions into more and more drastic situations.

The students are sent to Middlesex Ridge, the perfect private school. Teachers such as Ken Monitoff and Karen Pomeroy can inspire Donnie to the heights of his imagination. Doctor Monitoff is conversant with details of time travel and his advice gives form to Frank's suggestions. Nevertheless, even his comments are limited by his perception of the administration's control. Worse, Karen Pomeroy is challenged by Kitty Farmer over her choice of Graham Greene's "The Destructors" Karen thinks the story sharpens the students' critical abilities. Its irony gives them the opportunity to entertain feelings of destruction without actually acting them out. Further, Donnie understand this point when he notes how destruction is creation. But the flooding of the school is interpreted by Kitty as a literal acting out of the story. She does not allow a world where students can entertain extreme emotions that capture their confusion about their participation in the school activities and their developing sexual identities.

Kitty's indoctrination of the life line and Jim Cunningham's school rally indicate the actual intentions of Dr. Fischer. He is not averse to the rather obtrusive visit by the police to the school. These attitudes reveal the overall desires of the school to maintain this community based on exclusion and superiority. Eddie Darko complains about his taxes , but he more or less accepts the necessity to send his children to a private school. He advances the homogenous community that the school offers. The lifeline contradicts the style of creative assignments offered by Ken and Karen. The school is simply concerned if students play the game whatever its actual context. Given the choice, they tolerate Jim Cunningham and send Karen on her way.

Gretchen somewhat offers a glimpse into the realities of another world. She has escaped from a threatening step father. On the day that the school floods, she turns to Donnie for protection. Even though the bullies later pull knives on him, his experience with Frank means that he will not be intimidated by their taunting of her. Once he is with Gretchen, he feels less isolated. He tries to inform her about his revelations from Frank. She does not entirely grasp its import. In the junkyard after the outburst against Jim Cunningham, she tells Donnie to calm down. But when her mother is chased from her home, she again turns to Donnie and their intimacy develops. In a previous scene, he asks his mother Rose, "How does it feel having a wacko as a son?" Tearfully, she replies, "It feels great." The poignancy serves the direction of Kelly's exposition of the time line. The more that he feels sympathetic about Rose and Gretchen, the closer he gets to figuring out the time line. He no longer simply serves Frank, but he discerns his own purpose from the line. He can rectify the death of Gretchen by going back in time and sacrificing himself. His somewhat divine inspiration gives Richard Kelly the opportunity to cement details of his message.

Once the audience recognizes the threat revealed by Donnie's premonition, it is more apt to accept Kelly's uniform resolution of the time line. The Darkos confront the question: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" But the director does not really want to entertain that maybe "they're not so good". After all Donnie floods the school during off hours and burns down an empty Cunningham mansion. He is thus driven by the necessities of the time line to navigate his way back through the absurdities "Mad World", so aptly described by the Tears for Fears song at the end of the picture.

Donnie Darko discovers his vitality when Frank clues him in to his limitless powers. Donnie wryly laughs at the full extent of the damage that he has caused as this reminds him of the absurdity of the universe. This contrasts with the frustration that he feels around his mother Rose or his psychiatrist Lillian Thurman. Both seek deeper forms of mind control. Their attitude is exacerbated by the more extreme forms of behavioral control exhibited by Kitty Farmer and Jim Cunningham. His teachers Karen and Dr. Monitoff seem a great deal more sympathetic as they seem to encourage his imaginative journeys. His imagination yields access to a special form of existence. The viewer seems to be invited into this vision, and this provides Richard Kelly's appeal to his portrait; the viewer can appreciate the same discontinuities in Donnie's experience.

Both in the psychiatrist's office and in his discussion about the Smurfs, Donny indicates an assertiveness about his sexuality. "What's the point of living if you don't have a dick?" Until the arrival of Gretchen, he seems somewhat reticent in his interaction with the other girls in his school. His missions from Frank give him the chance to act more aggressively. He already harbors a disgust for Jim Cunningham's rather crude brainwashing technique. As well, he feels somewhat burdened by the demands of his prep school. The fire at Jim Cunningham's or the flood at the school seem like the immediate solution to such disturbances. The film captures the formulaic life of the school with the use of fast motion sequences. All the students lock into mundane flow of time. Donnie resists this turn in his contact with the transfigured Frank. He is called to a higher purpose. Frank taps into a layer of confidence that is built into his sexual fantasies. Rather than feel disconnected from himself and alienated from everyone else, he begins to realize that others share his visions about time's discontinuities. His desire for a sense of completeness is reflected by his enthusiasm about Dr. Monitoff's discussion of time travel. But there is still the overarching dominance of the image of world destruction.

Donnie's confrontations with a prophetic Frank seems only consistent with the myth of imminent world destruction that was slyly used by the Reagan administration to justify the brutalities of its economic policies. Middlesex, Virginia seems entirely cut off from these realities. But around the edges of this perfect world, the dark vision creeps in. Gretchen's mother runs from a violent stepfather. Jim Cunningham keeps a dungeon in his basement. A student pulls a knife on Donny in the bathroom. With early references to Michael Duakakis and the Presidential election of 1988, the context cannot be more obvious. While Kitty Farmer mouths platitudes about Dan Quayle and personal responsibility, she conducts her classroom like a regimental reeducation camp. Even the hands- off approach of the Darkos is only a further level of this same politics. In the debate segment Dukakis lectures his opponent about glaring inaccuracies with regards to the government's use of Norriega to funnel drug money to the contras. The director knows that later revelations will expose the Vice President's bravado, but EddieDarko rallies his candidate who is in his mechanical attack mode. "Tell 'em, George." Interestingly enough, Eddiefalls asleep in his chair after all this macho assertiveness. It is little wonder that Eddiecan seem so even-handed; he distances the horror from himself. Rose seems more broken by the string of events. She is always in the glaze of an alcohol numbness. When she goes off to Star Search with the Sparkle Motion dancers, she somewhat ironically asserts, "Elizabeth's in charge." Such delegations clear up the confusions of the age.

The technical details of time travel appear to offer Donnie the conviction that he lacks as he previously negotiated these ripples in his psyche. The jargon also gives the audience the feeling that it can also solve the mysteries that beset Donnie. The scene in the bedroom between Donnie and Gretchen is framed by two phone messages by Lillian and Rose. Lillian attempts to communicate the desperation of Donnie's visions; he is approaching a point of doom. At the same time, Rose is returning to the storm. In the midst of these threats, Donnie finds solace with Gretchen. Their embrace becomes relentless. To the strains of "Under the Milky Way, arm in arm, they rhythmically step down the stairs. Downstairs, he stares into her portal and recognizes the urgent nature of the threat to her life. He interprets the need for rescue by rushing to "cellar door". He hopes to find the support that they need from Roberta Sparrow. But the realities of his present time line confront him in the form of a sacrifice. He can only save Gretchen, Samantha, and Rose by himself perishing in the original crash of the plane engine into his bedroom.

The moral resolution is a further reassurance for the audience. Donnie has formerly pursued solitary lucid dreams. But his lucidity has brought him closer to Gretchen. He cannot give in to the same deviousness that has previously motivated him. Richard Kelly offers Donnie and the audience a way out of the paradox. The damnation of the first path only increases twenty fold. Therefore, the audience accepts the rather convoluted twist back to a redemptive path. It wants to believe.