This story starts when I was thirteen years old, I’ve loved movies my whole life but it was around that point that I began taking them seriously and recognizing them as art. It was a warm Friday night with great potential, I had the house to myself, and my dad gave me a choice of purchasing one movie of my choosing on demand. I went with Donnie Darko that night. I was fully conscious of all the talk surrounding this movie in the film community, but outside of Jake Gyllenhaal playing opposite a man in a creepy bunny suit, I knew very little going in. Jump forward about two hours later, and thirteen year old me had no idea what he just watched or what any of it meant. But with that confusion and unease, came an obsession with the mind-warping film. I had to know what it all meant.
The film never left my mind as I began researching it, seeing what others got from it, conversing with other people, and asking myself what impression all the little clues scattered throughout the film gave me. This was where I realized the true genius of the film, the fact that it challenged my brain and still to this day gives me things to ponder and think about. I gained a new appreciation for film and for movies that end rather open-ended and encourage the viewer to ponder and theorize. It’s almost pushing a decade since that first viewing and I still think about the movie and rave about it to others, in the hopes that they’ll watch it and go on a similar journey of discovery and thought that I did. You’ll notice in this blog that I’ve done very little to explain the plot of the film or what about it challenged my mind, that’s how serious I am about not ruining the experience for others and encouraging people to go in to the film as blind as possible. So if you’re reading this, I implore you to find a good night to sit and watch ‘Donnie Darko’ undisturbed. And if you don’t mind, tell me what you thought, because I can’t wait to have that conversation.