What’s up guys? Jared again. Today, we’re finally addressing a movie that
has plagued our comments section for what seems like forever: Donnie Darko. Over the years, we’ve tried to tackle this
head-scratching movie from almost every angle. We wrote a full script for Earthling Cinema
and another for a Philosophy Of video – but nothing ever panned out. Donnie Darko became a Sisyphean task; we did
the research, wrote the scripts, to only delete it all and move on. But we couldn’t just give up. This movie is a cultural phenomenon. One might even say it inspired a whole generation
to appreciate independent film. So it behooves us to ask: why did this film
resonate on the level that it did? Well, with the help of our new format – Half-Baked
– we think we can finally lay this movie to rest. So join me on this slightly confusing, literal
journey through time in this Wisecrack Half-Baked Edition: Donnie Darko. And yeah, the film’s almost 20 years old,
but hey, spoilers ahead. First, a
quick recap. Donnie Darko takes place in 1988, Middlesex
Virginia – a quiet upper class suburb. Donnie, a high schooler, is woken up by a
mysterious voice in the middle of the night. He wanders halfway across town and learns
this: “28 days. 6 Hours. 42 minutes. 12 seconds. That…is when the world will end.” More worrying still, when Donnie stumbles
back home the next morning, he finds it ruined – a jet engine crashed right through his
bedroom. Donnie then spends the rest of the month stumbling
through some weird shit that culminates in him saving the world by going back in time. He does this by, well, uh, we don’t know. But it involves listening to this terrifying,
imaginary bunny, Frank. “Did Frank tell you to do these things?” “I have to obey him. He saved my life. I have to obey him or I’ll be left all alone.” In following this supposed master plan, Donnie
does some crazy stuff. He floods his school, burns down a pedophile’s
house, and takes his girlfriend, Gretchen, on a Halloween date to an old woman’s cellardoor. But shit goes down and Gretchen is accidentally
run over, leaving Donnie to face doomsday alone. When the fated day arrives, a wormhole opens
up over Donnie’s house, and he watches from afar with Gretchen’s body. What happens next, well, time travel, I guess. Donnie wakes up in his bed 28 days earlier,
laughing because he’s succeeded in going back in time. In doing so, he’s saved Gretchen from her
automobile-fated death, and his family – who was on a plane going through that wormhole. Then, right on cue, the jet engine comes crashing
down and kills Donnie. Meanwhile, the rest of our cast is left feeling
oddly connected, as if somehow vaguely aware of Donnie’s sacrifice. Roll credits. Now if the details left you scratching your
head, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Donnie Darko is such a rapid fire succession
of ideas and themes that it can be a bit difficult to analyze. Now is there a grand philosophy for the film? Well here’s what we came up with. Idea One: Worldlines and Graham Greene. Early on, the film draws parallels between
Donnie’s journey and that of The Destructors, a short story by Graham Greene taught in Donnie’s
English class. In the story, a gang of London street kids
set their hearts on destroying an old man’s home down to the very last brick. They start by dismantling the interior, then
destroy all the valuables and flood the foundation, before finally they bring the walls themselves
down. Surprisingly, though, the boys aren’t doing
this out of hate. As Donny explains: “Well, they say it right when they flood
the house and tear it to shreds that like destruction is a form of creation, so the
fact that they burn the money is ironic. They just want to see what happens when they
tear the world apart. They want to change things.” This idea of destruction as an act of creation
is critical to understanding Donnie’s journey. After all, Frank’s master plan pretty much
amounts to a bunch of senseless destruction. When it’s all said and done,Donnie floods
the school, burns down a home, and gets at least two people killed. But the film also heavily implies that everything
Donnie did was absolutely necessary to go back in time and save the world. Now it’s not exactly clear how- as in the
new universe the Paedophile is still at large- but the director’s cut leads us believe
he was using destruction to create the conditions upon which the wormhole would appear. It does this first by telling us of T., the
short story’s protagonist whose plan seemed fated. “It was as though this plan had been with
him throughout his life, pondered through the seasons, now in his fifteenth year crystalized
with the pain of puberty.” Then it draws a parallel between T and Donnie
by showing us this surreal moment of the film. “I’m gonna get a beer.” Yeah, as Donnie later figures out with the
help of his science teacher, these weird bubble-path-things were actually a visualization of the future. “Well each vessel travels along a vector
of spacetime along its center of gravity.” “Like a spear.” “I beg your pardon?” “Like a spear that comes out of your chest.” “Um, sure.” And this is where the film draws on actual
science These “spears” as Donnie calls them are a real concept in physics. As physicist-philosopher combo David Deutsch
and Michael Lockwood explain: “Your life forms a kind of four-dimensional ‘worm’
in space-time: the tip of the worm’s tail corresponds to the event of your birth, and
the front of its head to the event of your death. An object, seen at any one instant, is a three-dimensional
cross-section of this long, thin, intricately curved worm. The line along which the worm lies… is called
the objects worldline.” By being able to see his worldline – meaning
his own position in the past, present, and future – Donnie knows what he needs to do
to make the time machine. Of course, you might be wondering if Donnie
being able to see his future is a logical contradiction. After all, if the future is written, doesn’t
that mean we have no free will? And props to the film, it gives a shout out
to this idea: “Well you’re contradicting yourself, Donny. If we were able to see our destinies manifest
themselves visually, then we’d be given the choice to betray our chosen destinies. And the mere fact that this choice exists
would make all pre-formed destiny come to an end.” Now, it’s hard to say that Donnie is contradicting
himself when he says that knowing the future is compatible with free will. As philosopher David Lewis explains in his
groundbreaking paper, The Paradoxes of Time Travel, our definition of possible changes
based on how complete our set of facts is. For example, not knowing my future self, it’s
“possible” that I could mount a bid for president in 2024. But let’s say I did know the future and
that Bauer 2024 never happened because I’d rather watch movies and play Red Dead. Well, knowing this fact about my future, I
would be right in saying that it’s not possible I’d run for president. Now importantly for Lewis, though, my knowledge
of the future wouldn’t limit my free will in the present. Just because I know I’m more likely to play
video games than run for president, doesn’t mean the universe would cosmically conspire
to stop me if I tried. There won’t be glitches in the Matrix if
I try to mount a bid. In the end, it’s not that future me couldn’t
run for president; it’s that present me knows that future me doesn’t run for president
because there’s just too many legendary animals to find. All that being said though, does the film
explore the conflict between free will, time travel and foreknowledge? Well not really, and that’s why we couldn’t
really make a definitive thesis in our prior videos. Not really, and that’s why we couldn’t
really make a definitive thesis in our prior attempts. Honestly, it feels like the film is all the
building blocks for some super deep philosophical insights, but never quite puts them together. Instead, Donnie talks about changing his worldline
like this: “Not if you travel in God’s channel.” “God’s Channel.” “God’s Channel.” “God’s Channel.” While there are a boatload of God fearing
scientists, by citing a transcendental all powerful being in the argument, the film changes
the topic from the physical to the mystical. And sure, on the surface this comment might
not make a whole lot of sense, but, the film is actually tapping into something
much deeper here. Idea Two: Quantum Physics and the Director’s
Cut. Now “God” might seem like a weird idea
for Donnie to toss around, especially considering that much of the film is a not so subtle critique
of upper-class conservatism and their sanctimony. “Nobody cares about responsibility, morality,
family values.” But that all depends on which version you
watched: the theatrical release or the director’s cut. While the theatrical cut is a good deal shorter,
it also omits for better or worse a lot of writer/director Richard Kelly’s worldbuilding. Particularly, in the Director’s Cut, you
get excerpts like this from Roberta Sparrow’s book, The Philosophy of Time Travel. Yeah, so to summarize, Donnie’s story takes
place in a “tangent universe” which is about to blow –that is unless Donnie stops
it in 28 days. In setting up Donnie as the Messiah – or
“Living Receiver” in the film’s lingo the movie gives him some weird powers and
some even weirder eyes. Donnie then saves the world, returning the
tangent universe to the primary one. While that might all seem like some random
stuff that Kelly just made up, he’s actually drawing on some pretty deep
ideas here. Afterall, Donnie isn’t just time traveling
– he’s time traveling across parallel universes. Which, based on your choice of philosophers
and physicists, is possible. Physicist Hugh Everett, for example, was famous
for coining the idea of a multiverse as a way to explain wave function collapse in quantum
mechanics. In quantum mechanics, before being observed,
a particle exists in a superposition of states. For instance, a photon acts like both a particle
and a wave until you try to look at it and then it makes up its mind about being either
one. The act of observance somehow forces this
indefinite state to collapse into a definite state. How? Well, there’s no real answer right now,
but Everett theorized that these collapses don’t really exist at all. Instead, when we observe a particle, we’re
observing a symptom of the universe splitting, as both states are realized in different realities. What this means for us is that there are nearly
infinite branching realities running alongside our own. So does that mean a universe could exist that
was cosmically doomed, such as Kelly’s tangent universe? Well likely not. Unlike media’s newfound obsession with multiverses. “This fry, is your universe, soggy it’s
weird it’s gross. And this delicious normal fry is my universe.” Everett’s theory of the multiple worlds
doesn’t invalidate the basic laws of physics. Parallel universes aren’t going to collapse
into each other. But that doesn’t necessarily rule out Donnie’s
time travel adventures. “How is that possible? How is time travel possible?” Now, I know that might sound weird to say
that time travel is possible, but it lies within the film’s very specific depiction
of the idea. Maybe some of you have heard of the grandfather
paradox, which states that backwards time travel is impossible because than you could
kill your grandfather and then you wouldn’t exist so then who goes back and kills your
grandfather?. By invoking parallel universes, Kelly completely
side steps this logical problem. Killing your grandfather would just make a
parallel universe where you don’t exist. Like the grandfather paradox, how could a
bullet-holed Frank be able to warn Donnie about the world ending if Donnie went back
in time and saved it? Well, if Frank was from a parallel universe,
then it all checks out. And if you think we’re reaching here to
explain away some inconsistencies in the film, I don’t think so. Remember those wordlines we talked about earlier? Physicist Kurt Gödel proved that a universe
could hypothetically exist in which these wordlines were actually closed loops. That means by going forward in time, you could
end up in your own past. Kind of like your future self lapping your
past self in Mario Kart. And while our particular universe is not constructed
this way, various physicists have proposed how these “closed timelike curves” could
theoretically exist, like physicist John Wheeler and Kip Thorne, who believe these mariokart
track timelines could be generated using wormholes. And again, Donnie Darko does throw this idea
out there. “According to Hawking, a wormhole may be
able to provide a shortcut to jumping between two distant regions of spacetime.” But while the movie alludes to all these weighty
ideas, in the end, everything comes back to Kelly’s weird mythos. Sure, Donnie and his teacher talk about science
but then Kelly explains everything away like this in the Director’s Cut: “Water and
Metal are the key elements of Time Travel. Water is the barrier element for the construction
of Time Portals used as gateways between Universes at the Tangent Vortex.” So, no science, no real discernible philosophy
or belief system, just Kelly’s unique brand of mysticism. And yeah, certainly not enough to really flesh
a Philosophy Of video. Idea 3:The Burbs. So here’s the big question, Wisecrack: Why
is this film such a cultural milestone? Why do people point to it as a really profound
movie? While I can point to a lot of things, like
the great cast and the amazing soundtrack, for me, it comes down to how well Donnie Darko
functions as an exploration of upper middle-class angst. From its depiction of teenage sexual frustration,
to baby boomers struggling to understand their child’s mental illness, the film is an incredible
exploration of growing up privileged in the late 80s. If any of you have ever lived in suburbia,
you know how frustratingly appearance-focused it can be. Take Mrs. Farmer, for example, a parent and
teacher who’s obsessed with her own moral crusade. “I want to know why this filth is being
taught to our children.” Throughout the film, we see Mrs. Farmer constantly
judge and belittle others for not subscribing to Jim Cunningham’s BS self-help advice,
especially Donnie’s more liberal mother. “Our paths through life must be righteous. I urge you to go home and look in the mirror
and pray that your son doesn’t succumb to the path of fear.” Of course, Mrs. Farmer is never concerned
about being truly moral. Despite her idol, Jim Cunningham, becoming
a convicted pedophile, Mrs. Farmer still holds onto her steadfast belief in his moral system. Proving how righteous she really is, Mrs.
Farmer insists on going to Jim’s trial instead of taking her own daughter to a televised
talent show – and then shamelessly guilt trips Donnie’s
mother, Rose. “Rose, I have to appear at his arraignment
tomorrow morning, and as you know, the girls are scheduled to leave for Los Angeles in
the morning. And as their coach, I was the obvious choice
to chaperone them on their trip, but-” “But now, you can’t go.” And this is where the film really succeeds. It shows us in stunning detail all the annoying
trappings of middle-class suburban life, and then gives us a voice in Donnie to speak out
against it. After all, there’s something viscerally
relatable to Donnie standing up to all the ridiculous expectations placed on him. We’ve all wanted to stand up and say no,
like Donnie did when he rejected Jim Cunningham’s ridiculous moral system. “You can’t just lump everything into these
two categories then deny everything else.” And to that end, Donnie’s acts of rebellion
and even destruction feel kind of acceptable. He floods the school, sure, but that’s the
same school that fired his favorite teacher for daring them to think for themselves. “I don’t think you have a clue of what
it’s like trying to communicate with these kids. We are losing them to apathy – to this prescribed
nonsense.” He burns down a house, but hey, the owner
was our aforementioned pederast. “Eight year olds dude.” In the end, these acts of rebellion function
as a form of escapism to us, the viewers. As Freud once paraphrased fellow psychologist
Theodor Fontane, people “cannot subsist on the scanty satisfaction they can extort
from reality. We simply cannot do without auxiliary constructions”. In other words, fantasy and wish fulfillment
are necessary to keep us happy and functioning. And to that end, Richard Kelly’s weird world
building complete with super powers and time travel acts as the ultimate form of escapism
from suburban monotony What if, like Donnie, you actually were the
center of a tangent universe and it was up to you to save it? For me, those thoughts would at least make
all the white picket fences a little bit more bearable. So what do you think, Wisecrack? Did we spend the last few years missing an
obvious angle Donnie Darko? Is there a more philosophically deep and consistent
thesis that we’ve missed? Or are you in our camp, and think that what
makes the film great is how it channels our middle-class, edgelord angst? Drop us a line and let us know in the comments
section. And if you want to build your own website
for free, check out wix.com/wisecrack. Peace guys.
When I watched this the first time, I wasn't too interested in the details of the plot and the philosophy, I was more interested in Donnie's mental and emotional state.
I loved the moment when he called Jim Cunningham the antichrist. I felt like he was speaking for me, and saying things I never got to say.
Donnie believes destruction is a form of creation, and he acts it out in the movie. The logos destroys pathological order to restore the balance of chaos and order. Donnie also sacrifices himself.