Donnie Darko is the eponymous protagonist who also happens to be a paranoid schizophrenic and has stopped taking his medication. Ergo, Donnie now has a habit of sleepwalking. On October 2, while Donnie is in his bedroom, he is called by a voice and he leaves his bedroom to follow the voice. In this sleepwalk of his, he meets Frank – a hideous and menacingly huge rabbit. This rabbit tells him that the world is going to come to an end in 28 days. Meanwhile, a mortal airplane wing crash destroys Donnie’s bedroom.
Next morning , Donnie goes to school as always. Donnie’s family – Donnie, parents and two sisters are now staying in a hotel at the expense of the airport authorities, who themselves seem to be confounded by the airplane wing crash on the Darko family’s residence.
Days continue to pass fairly ordinarily after the October 2nd crash. But Donnie continues to sleepwalk, meet Frank and on his advice, vandalize school property, a celebrity house and so on. Meanwhile he also starts to like a girl named Gretchen. In the days, Donnie was going to school, meeting Gretchen and leading a normal life. But during the nights, he continues to sleepwalk and do as directed by the big rabbit Frank.
On October 30th, amidst Halloween day celebrations,also the day when the world will come to an end according to the prophecy of the rabbit Frank, Donnie alongwith Gretchen and two other friends goes to a house where he feels that he would find some answers. There, he lands up in a fight with some school bullies and in an unfateful accident, a car crushes Gretchen leaving her dead. Donnie loses control and kills the driver by putting a bullet in the driver’s right eye with a pistol. To his amazement, this driver is dressed in the same menacing rabbit suit just like Frank always does and name of the driver is also Frank.
Donnie takes the dead Gretchen in his arms and goes over to the top of some hill from where he watches the sky and sees the portal** from where the airplane wing came and crushed his room on October 2nd. The Date is now reset from October 30th back to October 2nd and Donnie is sleeping in his bedroom. And suddenly the airplane wing crashes in his room and kills Donnie. The movie ends giving the viewers a last look on all the people whose lives were touched by Donnie’s life before October 2nd and after October 2nd in the alternate unstable universe where Donnie had lived for 28 days more than in the real universe. The movie ended and i was not sure of what to make out of the feeling i had. I was not bored. Hell No, not a bit. It was more like an uneasiness which one feels when he does not understand a simple coherent line of thought which he has witnessed all along from its conception to its execution but has not understood fully.
At the end, i personally felt this biting uneasiness. The movie was progressing along so well and then suddenly i found that i missed the point, not by much, but missed the point nonetheless.
Part II of this post will analyze the theory behind sequence of events in Donnie and the interpretation of the one of the best Fictional movies ever.
** portal – A technological gateway between two distant locations in space or time.
