(A & I) Donnie Darko – Part II

(Analyze and Interpret) Donnie Darko Part – I gave a very brief introduction of Donnie Darko but did not talk about the events how they happened. Did they happen the way they ought to happen or the story teller is merely making a fool out of me. Totally overwhelmed by the story, I had to find the right balance between the beauty, integrity,charm of the story and  the rationality,  chronology and  science involved in the events of the story. Was it schizophrenia ? Was it time travel ? Was it a alternate universe spawning along the lines of the original universe ? Was it all of this ?

My personal version of Donnie Darko is –  Donnie Darko was a bright lad or perhaps had a basic knowledge of portals, time travel and might have also had the knowledge of the cause and effect during these time travels (a.k.a. causality loops). He was also a schizophrenic. He  imagined the rabbit suited Frank. He imagined girl Gretchen whom he loved. In fact his delusions were so profound that he created an alternate universe in his imagination.

It might have happened this way. Donnie started to think about time-travel,  portal and the an object(the airplane wing) sent through the portal from the future.  Normally in the all the conventional paradoxes of time-travel like the ontological paradox, grandfather paradox, etc.  if someone or someting is sent through a portal from the future to the past then there is a scope that the events taking place because of this would not effect the events in the normal universe but instead would spawn an alternate or a parallel universe. For example, in a grandfather’s paradox, if one travels back in time and kills his own grandfather before the garndfather has met the grandmother, then his own birth would be jeopardized thereby triggering an alternate universe in which the time-traveller will not exist. Donnie knows about this theory and he spawns an alternate universe with Frank the rabbit to guide him in such a way so that Donnie does the needful in order to merge this alternate universe with the real universe in due course of time. And so the events take place in Donnie’s schizophrenic imagination leading to the point where his girlfriend dies and he himself kills Frank.  But in this version of mine, i cannot reason out the airplane wing crash which actually kills Donnie in the end.

But the actual crash of the airplane wing which kills Donnie is the turning point, the indiscernible , the inexplicable  and true beauty of the movie Donnie Darko. Whatever it may be,  this will be one of the best movies i have ever seen in the Sci-Fi genre.

Donnie Darko also has one of the most beautiful endings one can see on the celluloid. It plays a wonderful song “Mad World” by Gary Jules at the end and shows about all the people whose lives were touched by Donnie’s in the primary and the alternate universe. Perhaps i may never discern the actual meaning of the movie, perhaps there aint any. But what the hell, it is a beautiful movie.

Mad World by Gary Jules – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MyMOi4LEr4