Echo of the bunnyman
Give Donnie Darko one more chance.

By Susan Gerhard

IF MARGARET THATCHER had never been appointed the leader of Great Britain's Conservative Party on Feb. 11, 1975, perhaps Ronald Reagan wouldn't have presided over "morning" in America and George H.W. Bush wouldn't have ascended to the presidency – which means George W. Bush wouldn't have had a chance to bring the human race to the edge of extinction. It's a pleasant thought. But on the flip side, if Thatcher had never gotten that appointment in 1975, we might not have had Joy Division two years later. And if we never had a Joy Division, we would have had no New Order, which means there would have been no Pretty in Pink, or at least no music to back up Molly Ringwald when she confronted Andrew McCarthy. That also means the John Hughes canon might never have taken its place in pop culture, which would leave no cultural legacy for writer-director Richard Kelly to disrupt with Donnie Darko, and no cult following to ensure that a lukewarm audience response to the initial release of the feature would be followed, in three short years, by a director's cut of the film – deleted scenes reinserted, music revised, psychosis expanded – an unprecedented feat, and one not likely to be repeated.

And yet the three years that separate Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut from the first version, released in the month after Sept. 11, 2001, haven't exactly seen the culture moving (to quote Donnie's ecstatic gym teacher) from the "fear" end of the spectrum toward the "love." After a third viewing – and I have to admit, I don't find the new cut adds or subtracts much – Donnie Darko is still as strange as when it first hit. Watching it is almost like getting rolfed; Kelly's oddball direction pushes in original, unexpected places. Unlike with the Hughes movies that inform its song and character lists, its new wave soundtrack doesn't rescue the film from the depressing realities of day-to-day existence but reinforces those banalities in very undanceable ways. The Robert Zemeckis-style F/X touches don't add that Hollywood "sparkle" but feel more like true products of mental illness. The triumphant story line downplays romance – motivation for heroism here – the way superhero films targeted to game boys do, as opposed to highlighting them in the manner of those "teen" films that target nostalgic adults. In all, the movie appears to be the brilliant work of what might be considered a very immature mind. Is it wrong to say I think this culture needs more of that?

Kelly's needle doesn't even follow the grooves laid down by the David Lynch and John Waters schools of perverted suburbia. His Republican family has its patterns, yet – in its dream-state, tangent-universe antidote to too many nightmares on Elm Street – they escape predictability. The unit is oddly functional and supportive. And no core character is rote. Jake Gyllenhaal turns a lithium shuffle into a noirish, deliberate valor with very strange rhythms. Mary McDonnell turns a potentially typical, martyr-type mom into a complicated family foundation, and Holmes Osborne's conservative father figure doesn't know best as he enthusiastically bumps up against the skeletons in his closet. Kelly doesn't seem bent on affixing blame on America, or its front lawns. He allows the film to nest as comfortably as a parasite inside one teenager's mind.

It couldn't have picked a stranger time to emerge from its host, considering the fact that the story develops from the ashes of a crashed airplane and was released into the post-traumatic atmosphere of the United States. Audiences may have thought they were going to get teen alienation at a moment when such an '80s-style emotion felt meaningless, and dutifully turned their attention back to network news and Prozac. Those who realized they were getting a newly tweaked teen redemption, at a moment when acts of real-life heroism were trumpeted daily, may have filed it under "failed entertainment." But clearly there was another audience that saw a movie of teen prophesies set in the "historic" '80s as eerily visionary. The coincidence of the airplane crash and the convergence of Bushes may have surrounded the film in a little more aura than it merited. Perhaps that aura has kept the movie alive – and of course, Donnie Darko is all about second chances.

True, if Donnie Darko had never been released to the public, that resulting absence might have saved a lot of people a whole lot of time. A woman named Sarah, for instance, has a blog I found through GreenCine Daily, in which she admits that she's seen the movie "about 30 times" – to understand it better. How many movies can inspire that kind of confusion, as well as devotion? Shouldn't we savor the moment, even if it's the last film that ever gets this kind of special re-attention from distributors? Roger Ebert called Donnie Darko "the one that got away" in his 2001 review. In 2004 we'll have to amend that: it's now the one that got away with it.

'Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut' opens Fri/3, Lumiere Theatre, 1572 California, S.F. (415) 267-4893; California Theatre, 2113 Kittredge, Berk. (510) 464-5980. See Movie Clock for show times.