Sunday, July 25, 2004
Donnie Darko
Part of the idea of this blog is to talk about things other than the band as well, as I used to occasionally do on the updates page with movie/music commentary etc.. This one is stemming from a Salon article here:
DD happens to be a movie I enjoyed quite a bit. I don't quite understand the need for some folks to have it all explained to them however, and Richard Kelly's newly released "director's cut" seems to take some of the mystery out of it all.
When I was 16, I was hit by a car and nearly killed. I spent 6 weeks in the hospital and 6 months afterwards recovering from the accident. So, DD, Butterfly Effect (which more than borrowed from DD's premise), and any of a number of other movies that consider the question of "what would the world be like without me in it?" are of particular interest. There's nothing more to make you think about what your place in the world is than to think about who or what would be impacted if you weren't there.
While organized religion has never done much for me other than to leave me feeling left out, I like to think that there is a reason for all of us to be here, or reasons for us to leave. The best thing about DD was that at the end, he was at peace with the knowledge that his death was saving the lives of others. He understood that he was meant to die on that day, and his not dying had ultimately caused the deaths of others that he cared about. That's why reading about this "director's cut", which seems to be about Kelly telling you exactly what he meant the movie to be about (God's control over Tangent Universes or some such), is disappointing. DD was a great movie for what it left unsaid, and made you think about.
DD happens to be a movie I enjoyed quite a bit. I don't quite understand the need for some folks to have it all explained to them however, and Richard Kelly's newly released "director's cut" seems to take some of the mystery out of it all.
When I was 16, I was hit by a car and nearly killed. I spent 6 weeks in the hospital and 6 months afterwards recovering from the accident. So, DD, Butterfly Effect (which more than borrowed from DD's premise), and any of a number of other movies that consider the question of "what would the world be like without me in it?" are of particular interest. There's nothing more to make you think about what your place in the world is than to think about who or what would be impacted if you weren't there.
While organized religion has never done much for me other than to leave me feeling left out, I like to think that there is a reason for all of us to be here, or reasons for us to leave. The best thing about DD was that at the end, he was at peace with the knowledge that his death was saving the lives of others. He understood that he was meant to die on that day, and his not dying had ultimately caused the deaths of others that he cared about. That's why reading about this "director's cut", which seems to be about Kelly telling you exactly what he meant the movie to be about (God's control over Tangent Universes or some such), is disappointing. DD was a great movie for what it left unsaid, and made you think about.
