Caboose

Just saw Donnie Darko, another not-very-cheerful film.

I’m not entirely sure what happened in the film, which I suppose is how you’re supposed to feel at the end. It mixes up so many different types of film: 80’s high school, dark teen angst, X-Files weirdness…

Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie is convincingly confused and angry. It’s not all dark though, the occasional outbursts of humour brighten up the film when it’s in danger of becoming too miserable.

(don’t read the rest of this post unless you’ve seen the film)

There are at least three ways of looking at the end of the film. In the extra-dark version Donnie is becoming increasingly schizophrenic and his belief he can reverse time is a last retreat into fantasy. In the sci-fi version all the time-travel stuff is true, Donnie sacrifices himself to save Gretchen. The last one (I can think of) is that most of the film happens in Donnie’s mind as he dies.

Reading the user comments on IMDb a lot of people seem to be confused, a few hate the film, one or two say you either love it or hate. The love/hate attitude is ironic considering Donnie’s attitude to the love-hate axis in the film, you can’t just categorise things in one dimension, it’s always more complicated than that.

A question that popped into my mind watching the final scene of Donnie’s grieving parents outside the wrecked house. Is this sudden but final loss going to be easier for his parents in the long term than his gradual withdrawal from reality. Both ways they lose him but in one he’s physically still there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not making some kind of “better dead than mad” argument, people just seem better able to cope with a single loss than something as drawn out as mental illness.