Isabel and I watched the film Donnie Darko for the first time this weekend (do you still need to alert spoilers for a ten year old movie?).
What follows is my interpretation of the film, and I will concede from the get go that my interpretation might not accurately convey the intended meaning of the film. It's one of those cult classic movies with all sorts of metaphysical rules that you can read about on the Internet...or in the DVD special features. I haven't read any of them, so it's a safe bet that the director has answers that I'm missing.
Anywho...brief synopsis to refresh your memories: Donnie Darko is one of those American gothic characters who is might be clinically insane or experiencing actually communication with supernatural beings. Like Hamlet, there is the possibility that he is both mad and experiencing bona supernatural realities. Life is not easy for him.
Early in the film, Donnie is coincidentally saved from death when a creature in a bunny suit (see Harvey with Jimmy Stewart) lures him out of the house on the same night that a jet engine coincidentally falls from the sky and crashes into his bedroom. Donnie is convinced he owes the bunny, named Frank, his life, and procedes to obey the bunny to do all kinds of horrible things. Yet, each act of evil turns out to have been a blessing in disguise. For example, Frank-induced pyromania turns out to expose a local spiritual guru as a pedophile when the fire department uncovers a secret room.
Things get more confusing when Frank introduces the concept of time travel, and claims to know things from the future -- primarily that the world will end on Halloween. The time travel gimmick seems to be confirmed when Donnie (also coincidentally) is given a book on time travel written by a crazy old former nun. The (SPOILER) big pay off is when Donnie and his girlfriend get violently assaulted near the end of the movie; a random driver scares off the muggers, but accidentally kills Donnie's girlfriend. Donnie (who stole a gun, seemingly at Frank's advice), kills the driver in a fit of rage. The driver turns out to have been wearing the bunny suit...and was named Frank. The last scene is Donnie watching a transtemporal wormhole form over his house, strike a jetliner, and send the engine back in time, straight into Donnie's bedroom...where he is, this time, asleep.
All of the events of the movie are unwritten. Donnie never meets his girlfriend. She is never killed. The local guru is never exposed as a pedophile. Donnie never kills anyone. His family is traumatized as his corpse is carted off.
Needless to say, Isabel and I were confused.
My take on the film: At one point, Donnie has a conversation with his physics teacher about time travel, and the age-old question about whether the future is fixed because God knows what can happen. If I had been Donnie's teacher, I would have handed him Boethius. His physics teacher gives him the book written by the crazy ex-nun. Anyway, it does raise the question, "How does God see?" Donnie wants to know if he can see the way God does and either determine what will happen or possibly resist it.
For me, this becomes key to making sense of the film. Our last scene is one of horror, despair, confusion. What kind of universe is it that some kid dies in bed because an engine randomly falls on him? This would seem to be a meaningless, absurd universe. Certainly, watching all of the events of the movie become suddenly unwritten could suggest that the point of the movie is nihilistic. What was the point could be the very question of the movie.
But I think it goes further than that. Earlier in the film, one of Donnie's teachers forces him to take part in a situation ethics exercise. Donnie refuses to do so, arguing that no situations are clearly black and white morally. He wants more data before making the call.
At the end of the movie, Donnie's death seems horribly tragic. But is it?
The movie challenges us with a series of moral dilemmas: Would we rather Donnie still be alive, but be a murderer? Would it be better to have loved his girlfriend, but then have her die a miserable death? Would we rather have Donnie be a living murderer who exposed a pedophile, or would we rather let Donnie die innocent and the pedophile for free?
I don't think we can easily answer these questions, but the movie does draw certain responses out of me. For me, it seems to dramatize an answer to the question of the problem of evil: that is, why would an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving God let evil exist.
In the case of this movie, it seems to suggest that, while the world is still broken, supernatural forces do their darnedest to keep it from being more broken.
One imagines Donnie's parents asking how a God could let their son die such a strange death. What they don't know is, had Donnie been spared, the movie would end with them asking why God would let their son become a heart-broken murderer. Actually, Donnie pretty much breaks every commandment in the decalogue by the end of the movie...so we are left with some uncomfortable questions.
Would we rather live in a world where supernatural forces bump us off before we commit grievous sin, or a world where we are allowed to survive after making horrible mistakes?
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