Richard Kelly’s 2001 cult classic celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year, which gives me an excellent opportunity to talk about what is probably my favourite film, Donnie Darko. This movie is a paradox in some ways. It’s a very relatable coming of age story that somehow depicts our protagonist being influenced by a giant bunny rabbit who guides him through a tangent universe. Quite simply, there isn’t another film like it. 

The title character, Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal), is a clearly troubled high school student. His psychiatrist informs his parents that he exhibits many traits of paranoid schizophrenia. We, as the audience, see Donnie’s supposed hallucinations, but are immediately shown that something is off about his visions. Early in the film, Donnie is awakened and guided out of his house by the voice of Frank, the aforementioned giant rabbit. Frank informs Donnie that the world is going to end in approximately twenty-eight days. Throughout the rest of the film, Donnie devotes much of his time to learning about time travel and the existence of a tangent universe to try to prevent what Frank is foreshadowing. I really don’t want to spoil too much of the plot, so I won’t go much further into it than that. 

When I first saw Donnie Darko, I definitely didn’t instantly view it as one of my favourite films that I’d want to re-watch for years. My only real criticism of this movie is that it’s a bit inaccessible on the first viewing. There is simply a lot missing from the theatrical cut of the movie. There are many details from the director’s cut that more explicitly explain what’s going on, and excerpts from the fictional book, The Philosophy of Time Travel are especially helpful. While I do prefer the director’s cut over the theatrical cut, I’d recommend that the viewer watch the theatrical version first to get a taste of the confusion and the debate about the ending. I certainly appreciated the film much more after seeing the two cuts in that order.

On my first viewing, before I really understood all of the tangent universe and time travel aspects, one thing that I immediately loved about the film was its subtle political commentary, especially regarding the era of the 1980s. As a political science student, I can’t help but love films with a political message, and I love it even more when it’s more of an undertone than the main theme. The movie is heavily critical of the ‘moral majority’ movement of the ‘80s which shamed practitioners of recreational drugs, premarital sex, rebellious literature, and generally those who criticize the status quo. While this message is sometimes quite explicit in, for example, the famous scene in which Donnie calls a moral majority motivational speaker “the antichrist”, it also does this more subtly by playing classic ‘80s music throughout the movie that suggests that those who preach morality often have dark secrets of their own. 

On that note, the music in this film fits it perfectly. The ‘80s nostalgia of bands like Tears for Fears captures the time well, and the original score adds so much to what would normally be a pretty simple scene. For instance, the song, ‘Manipulated Living’ is played when Donnie confronts Patrick Swayze’s motivational speaker character in front of the school, a relatively low-stakes scene for the film, but the music heightens the tension to a wonderful extent. Perhaps the most iconic song from this movie comes at the end with Gary Jules’ ‘Mad World’ (aka that sad meme song), which, if you understand the ending, is absolutely haunting. 

Donnie Darko isn’t a film for everyone. Again, it’s fairly inaccessible on first viewing, but that’s part of why I love it. If there’s one common trait I can associate with just about all of my favourite films is that they take risks. These risks will not pay off for every viewer, and they don’t need to in order to make the film have a lasting impact. They simply need to be a unique experience for the viewer. Some audiences may hate it, and others will keep coming back year after year (hence the term cult classic). Definitely put me down for the latter.