Monday, April 10, 2017

Chris Stuckmann on Donnie Darko:


Me and the gang actually watched Donnie Darko for movie night way back in 2003 or 2004.  (We used to have a movie night back in those days ).
This was before I started up the movie review project on this blog, so I never reviewed it here.  But it did make an impression on me.  The movie was so incredibly well done, and the atmosphere was great.  But it made absolutely no sense!
I kept waiting for everything to be explained at the end, but then the end came, and nothing was explained.
Had I missed something?  Did I fail to put together all the clues?
"Either this was one of the greatest movies ever," I said to the gang, "and I just need to figure out all the clues.  Or it makes no sense at all and it's a terrible movie."

After I went home, I found out later that one of the gang said, "You know, Joel's really close-minded."  The idea was, I guess, that if I couldn't handle ambiguity in my movies, I was a close-minded person.
I don't know.  Maybe I am.

Like Chris Stuckmann, I put in my time researching theories of Donnie Darko on the Internet.  I've read the usual explanations for what is going on, but I think that the explanation is so convoluted that it was pretty ridiculous.  (Not to mention incredibly unfair to the viewer--there is no way the viewer could ever have guessed all that just from the film).

4 comments:

  1. I guess this would explain why you haven't been posting breathless updates on the Twin Peaks resurrection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I admit my weakness.

    Have you ever seen Donnie Darko?

    ReplyDelete
  3. You know, I never have! I've even got the disc in my collection. Not something the others in my family would grok, I don't think, so I've been slow to queue it up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'd give it a cautious recommendation. It annoys me that the films doesn't make sense, but the atmosphere is so well done that it's probably worth seeing at least once.

    ReplyDelete