Shedding light on 'Darko'
 Deborah Cannon AMERICAN-STATESMAN Richard Kelly's 'Donnie Darko' fell flat in theaters but later developed a cult following. |
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Director's cut will help answer questions that fans of the cult movie may have, filmmaker says
By Chris Garcia
American-Statesman Film Writer
Posted: August 27, 2004
This story is for "Donnie Darko" fanatics only.
If you have not seen the moody cult phenomenon, the following discussion of what it all means will make little sense. If you plan on seeing the 2001 film on DVD or in the longer director's cut opening today at the Dobie, read this article afterward. It could be helpful in clearing up a thing or two.
"Darko's" writer-director Richard Kelly, 29, was in Austin this week to present the new expanded version of his "science fiction fable," whose release is a treat to its enormous cult following and a bid to entice viewers who missed it the first time around. The strange and unwieldy movie about a teenager (Jake Gyllenhaal) destined to save the world opened nationally in October 2001, but tanked and vanished. It played the 2001 Austin Film Festival and had a brief run at the Alamo Village in 2002.
In perfect cult fashion, the DVD of the original version exploded, making more than $10 million in sales, and the film has become a midnight-movie staple. It's a genre-twisting, mind-bending trip that either becomes clearer or more perplexing with each viewing. For this, it has accrued young and rabid disciples who study it as they might "The Matrix."
Kelly, who was 23 when he wrote "Donnie Darko" and 26 when he shot it, admits he's exhausted of talking about the movie and vexed by the legions of fans who misinterpret it. Kelly hopes the extended version -- which is 21 minutes longer than the 2001 version and much closer to the cut he showed at the Sundance Film Festival that year -- will elucidate many of the mysteries fans have been grappling with in chat rooms and dorm rooms.
We talked to Kelly at the Driskill Hotel.
American-Statesman: Was cutting your original version painful?
Richard Kelly: It was incredibly excruciating, because it was stuff I always wanted in the film. The story was constructed so that there were all these arcs for the supporting characters. The parents had their arcs, Drew Barrymore's teacher character had her arc. Her and the dad's roles got really truncated in the theatrical cut. To me, Drew's character never made any sense in the theatrical cut, and the whole subplot about "Watership Down" was excised, which made you wonder what she was doing in the movie. The dad just kind of disappears as a character as well.
If Donnie isn't mentally unhinged, as you've said, then what's his deal?
He's a superhero.
For real?
Yeah. That line that Jena Malone says "Donnie Darko? What . . . kind of name is that? It's like some sort of superhero or something" and the title, "Donnie Darko," are clues.
The first time I saw the movie I entertained that idea, but in other viewings other ideas came up, such as him as a Christ figure.
There have always been two theories about this film. One: The movie is just a crazy dream experience he had in the moment of his death, as in "The Last Temptation of Christ." Two: He really does go into an alternate dimension of some sort, a parallel world. I'd always designed this elaborate logic to it on a science fiction level, that there has actually been a break in the space-time continuum and there's this place called the tangent universe.
Did you make this stuff up, or is it based in science fiction literature?
I just concocted it all based on the time travel book the old woman had written. In the theatrical cut, you never see inside that book other than two diagrams, and I always felt I had this great device, this teaser, that was never paying off, and I had written all this material that I couldn't even fit into the two-hour cut. With the longer version of the movie I have the opportunity to put the text in the film and help elaborate on what's happening to Donnie. It takes you into the idea of Donnie as a superhero: He embeds the head of an ax into the head of a bronze statue. He breaks a water main and there's this biblical kind of flooding in his school. He starts a raging inferno in this guy's house.
 Jake Gyllenhaal plays Donnie Darko, the title character in the science fiction fable. The director says contrary to how some have interpreted the film, it's not about mental illness. |
What kind of superhero is he? To me, it's like he's on Earth to rescue humankind spiritually, rather than physically -- again, like a Christ figure.
He's being contacted by some sort of messenger who's using the image of this kid in a rabbit Halloween costume who dies. When someone dies in this tangent universe it's called the manipulated death. Someone has access to their spirit and can use it as a contact device. And they're giving him instructions and arguably transmitting to him superpowers, because he has to do this stuff to get that jet engine back in place. If he doesn't get it back in place, a big black hole is going to swallow the world.
How's that?
Well, if you really pay attention to the time travel book, it can still all be a dream. So the dream theory is still valid. Going into the director's cut, I was frustrated by all the misinterpretations and the people who were arguing over this and that. I was thinking, "But there's all this material here that will help you understand!"
I'm still a bit confused. What kind of superhero would Donnie be? He's more like a philosopher combatting narrow, suburban values, than someone who saves people.
Ultimately, I think he saves the entire universe. I've always seen it as a martyrdom story, about a kid who saves humanity. It gets into the idea that if you ever broke the space-time continuum, we would be (doomed). This parallel universe at some point is going to go off the deep end into a black hole. So there's the idea of going back in time, which I show by rewinding the movie with the visual effects in the new version, the dreamlike imagery using technology and comic book panels.
Is your background and influences comic books?
I like comic books. I'm not super-educated in comic book logic like Kevin Smith. But this film is called "Donnie Darko" and it was always meant to be photographed in such a way to depict a suburban comic book fable. All the imagery, particularly that added to the director's cut, is meant to reinforce the panels of comic books. It was always part of the original design.
Where did you get the idea for "Donnie Darko"?
I get that one a lot. Quick answer: The urban legend about a piece of ice falling off the wing of a plane and hitting a kid's house. Turn that into a science fiction concept, and replace the ice with a jet engine, and figure out where the engine came from. There's no plane, so it came from the future. It came from another dimension in the future.
Explain Frank, the freaky, 6-foot-tall rabbit who talks to Donnie. Why a rabbit?
Because of "Watership Down," which is being taught in Donnie's English class. All of that was cut out of the theatrical and DVD versions. We wanted to make the rabbit as creepy and scary as possible.
What's the thematic link of "Watership Down" to your story?
The idea of a community on the brink of oblivion and the rabbit, Frank, having a premonition of oblivion, and ultimately finding a new place to live. They taught us that book in seventh grade and it made a pretty big impact on me.
The cutting of the "Watership Down" material makes Frank the rabbit even more out of nowhere in the theatrical cut.
But it still works. There are two versions of the film now. What I want people to calm down about is that the theatrical cut isn't going anywhere. The film was taken away from me after Sundance and things were done to it that I didn't want done to it. I'm honored to have been able to assemble the director's cut, but more than anything I just want people to have an open mind to this version and not be so possessive about the original. I get really irritated when people take the incomplete, truncated version of my film and misinterpret it as something that it's not, like a movie about mental illness, and when they get angry at me for restoring my original intentions, which as an artist I have a right to do. Look, the other cut of the film is not going anywhere.
