They made me do it.....

But what was it actually?

Donnie darko (character played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is the second movie which I saw in recent times and didnt understand fully. The first one was enigmatically beautiful 'The Fountain'. 

A young man named Donnie darko is having visions of a talking bunny rabbit, whom he calls Frank. Frank asks him to do things when he is asleep and he obeys, only to find out the result in the morning. One such night, Frank prophecies that the end of the world will occur in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. The same night a jet engine, of no origin, falls into Donnie's room. Nothing happens to Donnie as he was outside, following Frank's orders. It creates a series of events which all effect Donnie's life in one form or other. He gets a girlfriend, gets interested in Time-travel and keeps following Frank's orders. One day before the prophecied time of end of world, his parents go out of city for some reason and that day and Donnie's sister throws a partie in their home. Donnie's girlfriend comes to his home, and they go to Roberta sparrow's home, who is an old woman and all she does is standing near a letterbox and cheking it again and again. Apaarently, Roberta had written a book called 'Philosophy of time travel' which describes exactly what Donnie was seeing. At Sparrow's home, while Donnie and his girlfriend were getting bullied by some school students, Gretchen (Donnie's girlfriend) is killed by a car accident, and the driver was Frank (unmasked at that time, holding his bunny rabbit mask in his hand). Donnie shoots Frank in the eye, presumably killing him. It was earlier shown, in a sequence where Frank takes off his mask, that Frank's one eye was shot at. Also, Donnie was guided by some kind of translucent silvery plastic gel spheres to get the gun, and those spheres had something to do with Time-travel. As the prophecies time comes near, Donnie sees a Worm-hole getting created in sky. Taking Gretchen with him in a car, Donnie goes into the worm-hole, where the car acts as a vessel for their time travel. Also, due to the disturbance created by worm-hole, a Jet-Engine of a plane, in which Donnie's parents were travelling, gets broken apart and falls into the worm-hole.

Its shown then that the day is the day when Jet-Engine fell into Donnie's room and that Donnie is laughing. He sleeps after that and then the Jet engine falls into his room, killing him. Next day, Gretchen, passes by Donnie's home and asks what happened, seeing the croed. A neigbor boy tells her that a Jet-Engine fell and killed a boy in that house. Since she never saw Donnie in this time, she asks who was he and the boy answers- "Donnie Darko."

I can claim that I understood the movie, but even I wont be sure of it. The basic premise I did understand. That Donnie travels the time, saving Gretchen and dying himself. Just like when I understood the basic premise of The fountain, that all three characters were searching for tree of life, but there were so many things which I didnt understand. If Frank was shot in eye from Donnie, how his eye was already disfigured? Was he travelling time and thats why Donnie was saved from the jet engine first time? Who was Roberta sparrow exactly? What were those silver gel like sphere? An act of God? And finally, what was the bunny rabbit exactly?

I cant give it a 10, but its not because of some fault in movie itself, but because of my inability of understanding it. But before it seems unfair that I am giving less points to hide my inability of understanding it, I would say I cut them because howsoever complex a movie should be, it must be understood by the viewer, thats the beauty of direction.

One might say that movie leaves you to think yourself, to realize the end as you see fit, and I dont hate these kind of movies. The problem was, there were a lot of things inherently in the movie which were unexplained.

Still, Donnie darko is a great movie. Even if you dont understand it, you would appreciate the beauty lying in subtle scenes. Like when Donnie says his teacher to put the line into her anus, and his parents are actually amused by that. Or when Donnie asks Frank that why he wears that rabbit suit, Franks asks why Donnie wears the man suit.

Watch it twice or thrice, you will take away something new everytime. But its hard to believe that someone would actually understand the movie completely, other than the director and writter of course.

8/10.

P.S.- And for those who are interested, there is a sequel in the making. Titled S.Darko (Samantha Darko), it follows Donnie's younger sister after 7 years, on her journey haunted by a bunny rabbit.

Other movies I saw recently-

Meet Bill- 7/10.

KungFu Panda- 10/10.

Enchanted- 9/10.

Fargo- 7/10.

The Big Lebowski- 8/10.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall- 8/10.