'Donnie Darko' review by Captain Raptor

'Donnie Darko' review by Captain Raptor

Moody teenage drama combined with apocalyptic science-fiction? Sign me up. Donnie Darko is a film I've been intending to watch for a long time, primarily for the reason I just outlined, but given the high level of praise given to the film by critics (I was also amused at the prospect of seeing young Seth Rogen and Fran Kranz in minuscule roles) and its near instant cult classic status, it's been on my cinematic 'to-do' list for a long time, so the film had a lot of expectations to meet.

It more or less met them, but I wouldn't say that it greatly exceeded them. Jake Gyllenhaal's breakout performance as the mentally damaged and possibly prophetic teenager is truly amazing. He manages to portray the full spectrum of human emotion and can make the same smirk and tilt of the head seem threatening in one context and charming in another; he makes Donnie seem simultaneously so ordinary and yet so special. He's not immediately sympathetic from the start but he quickly grew on me, in no small part due to Gyllenhaal's multifaceted performance, but also because I like a character who can say "They just want to see what happens when they tear the world apart. They just want to change things" and "What's the point in living without a dick" with equal amounts of sincerity. The film is however a character study, and everybody else really only exists to reflect an aspect of Donnie or to advance the story, which doesn't allow any of the film's other cast to shine, which I feel that a few of them might have done (particularly Patrick Swayze's faux-inspirational speaker) if they were only allowed the screen time. But it's not all about actors, and some of this film's standout features are the result of the oft-forgotten people behind the camera - an emotive if somewhat overly dour soundtrack and some beautiful cinematography (courtesy of Stephen Poster) throughout the film gave it a gently cerebral quality.

Donnie Darko certainly is a strange film, and I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it. So much happens and yet so little happens, like a gloomy metaphysical Seinfeld where Kramer is a rabbit. On the surface the film mostly deals with Donnie stumbling through everyday life whilst on occasion being briefly tormented by apocalyptic visions. Highly dramatic and shocking things happen but they're dealt with on such a low-key level that the emotion doesn't come through, and I while I think that I enjoyed the subtlety a lot (it's absolutely crucial for the film's atmosphere) I can't help but feel that it made various parts of the film feel underwhelming. Similarly, the complex ideas and themes (time travel, morality, transdimensional rabbits) at the heart of the film are treated with the same level of importance as high school politics and other comparatively trivial and mundane minutiae. Does writer/director Frank Kelly do this to make a point or does he do it to create a laid back yet chilling atmosphere? I don't know. Does doing this make the film wonderfully unpredictable and entirely different in tone to anything you've seen before, or does it make it self-sabotagingly vague and difficult to invest in? I also don't know. Either way, a film unique enough to raise these sorts of questions is a rare thing indeed and worthy of praise simply for taking the risks that it did.

Donnie Darko is many things. Dark, mysterious, original, confusing, ponderous, languid, pretentious, dramatic, unconventional and thought-provoking. It's a strange experience, with drama and tension that's both present and not present, and I really can't describe it very well myself. I would urge you to watch it, not just because I think that it's fiendishly clever and generally very good, but because more than any film I've ever seen it's something so totally different that I think everybody should see it just to pass judgement. I don't use this term lightly, and the accolade isn't entirely based around its quality, but Donnie Darko is a genuine must-see.