Donnie Darko

Hey fellas!!! Back again to the blog hunh?? Yes now it’s another movie which did not even go past its budget even in its worldwide collection. It’s the critically acclaimed - Donnie Darko that you are going to read here. The film was released in 2001 and was budgeted with 4.5 million dollars and its gross worldwide collection was only 4.1 million dollars (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Casted by Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone and Mary McDonnell, Donnie Darko is the story of a teen hallucinated with end-of-world visions and a disturbing bunny rabbit faced man, who often urges Donnie to do a few crimes. The movie has a dual ending and I would recommend the readers to watch the movie because the movie is worth to be watched and enjoyed.

Donne Darko is a high school teen who is troubled with hallucinations of end-of-world visions. One night, on hearing some strange voice, he comes out of his house and sees a man with a strange bunny face. The rabbit-man says Donnie that the world is going to end in 28 days 42 minutes and 24 seconds. Suddenly a plane's engine falls on his house's roof. Nobody is injured but this incident shocks the neighborhood. Few more similar encounters with the bunny faced man urges Donnie to break the water pipe line of his school, and also once he sets his school and Jim Cunningham’s (the TV celebrity who makes programs to help people come out of their fears and lead a healthy social life) private house on fire . Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) falls in love with Gretchen (Jena Malone), his class mate and both go out for dating. Once Donnie throws a party where Gretchen comes in and they make love in a room. Then Donnie suddenly sees a kind of different visions urging him to move out of his house. Donnie, Gretchen and a couple of their friends go to a nearby house where his grandma lived and they start exploring the house. Now a couple of high-school bullies come over there and start in a fight with Donnie and Gretchen. During their fight, Gretchen is thrown on the road where a car comes by and runs over her. Gretchen dies on the spot. Two guys get out of the car, one with the bunny-rabbit costume coming directly from his party. Irritated, Donnie shoots the bunny-faced man and kills him on the spot. He takes Gretchen to his house and gets the keys to his car to get her to hospital. When he comes out of his house, he sees a time portal opening over the roof of his house. He fled in his car to the hospital. A plane coming from LA to their city, Virginia, in which his mother and little sister are returning from a dance competition, gets stuck up in turbulence and one of its engines falls down on their roof.

Now all this is happening in another universe, Tangent universe as the director calls it. In the primary universe, Donnie does not get out his house in the first scene to meet the bunny faced man. The engine of the plane falls on the house and kills him. All the above incidents happen in Tangent universe as part of some cosmological process of branching from Primary universe and the creation of a new one. The bunny faced man is indeed the man he shot on the road, his elder sister's boyfriend, Frank. He is from the other dimension and he was actually trying to help Donnie to understand that whatever is happening with him, his hallucinations, love, death of friends etc is happening in Tangent universe and not the primary one. Once the branching of Tangent universe is done, the primary universe gets reset to the starting date of this process. All this story starts on Oct-2, 1988 and the tangent universe gets branched off on Oct-30th, 1988. After it gets branched off, the primary universe gets reset to Oct-2nd date. Everyone forgets whatever has happened, with little fragments of memory.

The last scene clearly depicts Donnie's body being taken away in an ambulance and the engine is removed from his house, and everyone is crying. Gretchen comes in a cycle, and sees this incident but she could not recognize what has happened. Because all of her memory is reset on Oct-2 on which day she has not met Donnie. She waves her hand to his mom with an air of mutual recognition.

This is one of a difficult kind of movies to take from the novel. People would find hard to comprehend what the director wants to convey and that could be the probable cause of this movie's failure. The concept of existence of multi-universes is still in a theoretical phase and I am sure this would not have reached a wide range of the movie's audiences. Still this movie didnt escape from appreciation from our eyes!!!

Watch the movie and read the above review and please do post your valuable comments.

More to come..!!!