DONNIE DARKO - DVD review

Imagine living in a world where nightmares and reality merge, where waking dreams are a part of everyday life. Imagine being visited each night by voices, beings, creatures, who could influence your present and foretell your future. Paranoid delusions? Schizophrenic hallucinations? Space alien abductions? It's the state Donnie Darko, a character in his late teens, finds himself in during the course of the grimly satiric, psychological fantasy named after him.

In its abstract, often ephemeral themes and images, it's a film that will probably not find favor with everyone, but for viewers willing to put their disbelief systems on full suspend for a couple of hours, the effort could be uniquely rewarding.

If there's a weakness to "Donnie Darko," it's that it tries to go in too many directions at once. It wants to be a dark comedy, a psychological thriller, a pseudo sci-fi adventure, a social commentary, and a poignant contemporary drama all at the same time. Its topics of teenage alienation and suburban anxiety, its "American Beauty" allusions, and its wholly expected yet vaguely unsatisfying ending seem often at odds. Still, one has to commend writer/director Richard Kelly's ambitions, and I must admit I was mostly fascinated by the story.

Donnie (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a bright, handsome, college-bound youth living with loving parents ((Mary McDonnell and Holmes Osborne) and two sisters in a comfortable, affluent, upscale neighborhood. As the all-American boy-next-door, you'd think he had it made. Instead, he's in therapy for pent-up anger, maladjustment, and all-around hostility. He is becoming increasingly detached from a world he finds hypocritical and uncaring. He argues with his siblings, calls his mother a "bitch," pops tranquilizers, and dreams of a gigantic rabbit who tells him the world is going to end in twenty-eight days, which, coincidentally, turns out to be Halloween.

The year is 1988, an era in American history associated with rampant consumerism, an increasing disparity between upper and lower classes, general public unrest in matters ranging from economics to religion to "family values," an issue co-opted largely by conservatives, all of which are targeted in the film. Bush vs. Dukakis campaign ads are seen and heard throughout the story to reinforce the conflict. Donnie's school in the town of Middlesex contains several kids named Bates. The wacko gym instructor, Mrs. Farmer (Beth Grant), also teaches an ethics class where she insists that her students see the world in terms of right and wrong, "love and fear." Meanwhile, she tries to get books banned that don't meet her internal criteria for "good."

Then, too, the school promotes a self-help course taught by a clean-cut, New Age guru, Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze), who apparently makes millions off his television infomercials. Lots of subjects here ripe for satire; and for a topper of irony how about a motion-picture theater playing a horror double bill of "The Evil Dead" and "The Last Temptation of Christ"?

But the film reaches deeper than that. In fact, everything seems to change for Donnie the night fate steps in. How much fate? A jet engine drops through his roof. From then on, events begin to escalate. Donnie starts dating a girl, Gretchen (Jenna Malone), whose life is almost as wretched as his own but who is coping much better than he is. He goes under hypnosis with his therapist, Dr. Thurman (Katherine Ross). He meets a reclusive old lady, Mrs. Sparrow (Patience Cleveland), known to the community as "Grandma Death." And he is advised by the rabbit to do ever more destructive things.

Finally, he undertakes to learn about the "philosophy of time travel" and begins to wonder if it isn't possible to start everything all over again. "What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?" Perhaps, he begins to think, we can make our own destiny.

The movie gets funnier, weirder, sadder, and more tantalizing as it goes along; but it is not without its oddities as it proceeds, as well. Director Kelly opts for some peculiar filmmaking techniques throughout the story, sometimes at the expense of keeping his viewers' concentration on the subject at hand. For instance, he films Donnie getting off a school bus with his camera tilted sideways; later he speeds up his photography or gives us more curious camera angles. I suppose it's meant to demonstrate visually how distorted Donnie's world is, but I merely found it distracting. In addition, all of the schoolroom scenes ring false, but since it's primarily a sardonic fantasy, I won't object. Likewise, the amount of drugs, alcohol, sex, and profanity among these teens seems excessive, but, again, I guess some exaggeration is necessary to make a point about the empty lives these kids see around them. Michael Andrews' soundtrack music is sometimes so loud and overpowering that the dialogue is hard to decipher, and for that there is little excuse.

By and large, there's probably too much going on in the film for its own good, but if you can sort through the inessentials, there are some good pickings to be found.

Video:
The aspect ratio of this anamorphic widescreen production measures approximately 2.35:1. The image quality, however, is not always letter perfect, whether intentional or not. Sometimes Fox's usual crystalline clarity is in evidence, sometimes the picture is soft, vague, and almost blurred. Since I could find no plausible explanation for why the director would want purposely to do this (it isn't necessarily one of his cinematic devices), I can only assume it was carelessness on somebody's part, an element of the original print, or introduced in the digital transfer. In any case, it's not severe and should not hinder anyone's enjoyment of the film. I also noticed a small degree of natural film grain throughout the movie and the occasional instantaneous fleck here and there.

Audio:
In compensation, the Dolby Digital 5.1 sound is excellent, particularly for the all-enveloping quality of its musical track, which, as I've said, can sometimes be too much of a good thing when it begins to obscure what characters on screen are saying. In any case, the sound generally aids the eerie mood of the story line.

Extras:
There are a few good special features on the disc that might make it more appealing to prospective buyers on the fringes of making a final decision. These extras include, to begin, two audio commentaries, one with writer/director Richard Kelly and star Jake Gyllenhaal and a second with various members of the cast and crew. Then, there are twenty deleted or expanded scenes with optional director commentary; extensive cast and crew information; several "Cunning Visions" infomercials; "The Philosophy of Time Travel" book; a "Mad World" music video performed by Gary Jules; a gallery of production stills and concept art; a Web site gallery; a promo for the soundtrack album; twenty-eight scene selections; a widescreen trailer; and five TV spots. English and French are the spoken languages offered, English and Spanish the subtitle options.

Parting Thoughts:
"Destruction is a form of creation," Donnie says in English class one day, responding to a question his teacher (Drew Barrymore) asks about a short story. His sentiment pretty much sums up the nature of the picture; the themes are mainly ones of tearing down and building up. In the end, the sentiment gets a bit more sappy than I would have liked, but the film is well intentioned. "Donnie Darko" is rated R exclusively for its use of profanity; otherwise, it's largely non-offensive.