Thoughts on Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" (2001)

Donnie seems to be stuck in a place that can't stop moving and yet simultaneously feels deserted. Wherever his "mellow" American suburban town is doesn't matter; he is experiencing, as his psychotherapist says, a "detachment from reality stemming from his inability to cope with the forces in the world that he perceives to be threatening". I'm not sure it would make a difference if he were in any other place.

Donnie suffers from the daylight hallucinations of a paranoid schizophrenic (in some cases symptoms emerge as auditory hallucinations, or both). In his visual hallucinations, he sees a giant bunny. Rather, someone dressed in a bunny suit who appears to him in dreams, while he sleepwalks, or when alone. The bunny speaks in slow, sedated speech, a speaking tinged with robotic tones. This bunny gives him a random amount of time before the "world will end": 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Donnie tries to fathom this timeline as the film progresses, wondering what it could mean, what he should do, and what death ultimately might represent.

The basic storyline is split, much like a schizophrenic's episode might occur in their mind; the simultaneous happening of two elements, concepts, ideas that do not seem to be able to merge into one out of a contradiction in reason. In the film, there is a crash, but the crash happens in two different ways. The first crash goes straight through Donnie's house harming no one, and the entire family (including Donnie's mom, dad, and two sisters) is forced to sleep in a hotel for a while as their house is being investigated and repaired. The second crash happens at the end and kills Donnie, but saves another's timeline (the timeline of life) - one in which his girlfriend (Gretchen) isn't killed (run over) by a speeding car. One of my favorite lines in the film is when Donnie's talking to his Dad after the crash and letting him know that the FBI doesn't want the family to tell anyone what actually happened. The thing is, no one actually knows what happened, hence:

"So we're not supposed to tell anyone, but nobody knows."

The two storylines weave and intersect like an intricate tapestry, meeting somewhere in the middle. Decidedly, the storyline's beginning and end are two separate threads, aiming ahead towards each other and meeting at a point in the middle, a strange kind of profound depth that chronological storytelling misses, making this film quite unique and powerful (some other films may have done this, Pulp Fiction maybe, or Arrival, but Donnie Darko does it in such a way that is relevant to adolescence, coming-of-age, American suburban life, and the '80s). The metaphor of the wobbly, bubbly, translucent energy tube coming out of Donnie's chest, leading him here or there in certain parts of the film, reminds the audience of how Kelly's storyline is working - instead of a story "walking" on a flat 2-dimensional level (think of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs) the story instead moves 3-dimensionally, inward and outward instead of across. How Donnie's heart-chakra/aura (if that is what it is. That's what it seems like to me) moves from inside of him to outside of him, appearing as that holographic, watery tube of energy. This is kind of how Kelly's storytelling is moving, if not cinematographically, then conceptually. This is especially fascinating because there are levels of metaphysics here in the dialogue, then again in Donnie's inner world, then again in the actual plot. However, there is a simple problem that remains, if anyone should decide to solve the mystery of time presented (which I won't, not in this piece at least): the problem of cause and effect.

What I'm interested in is Donnie's character - his special take on reality. He cares deeply about his family, yet it seems as if he feels like he is the last one, like the only one remaining in a place full of the kinetic and potential energy of future plans (his older sister partying with boys and going to Harvard, his younger sister in a popular dance group and worried about other things, even his mother and his father's somewhat humdrum life of bourgeois drama). And Donnie is the nucleus of the place without asking for it or wanting to be. He sees outsiders, like Cherita (a minority in the spotlight of this film, sticking out from the crowd of puffy-haired girls, "well-adjusted" and accent-free teens) and Gretchen, the new girl in town who is ostracized for her mysterious, and violent, background, and just for being sensitive and authentic (for whatever reason a cause of jealousy and disrespect).

Donnie also points out people's bullshit when he can. The motivational speaker whose house he burns down: that man is the film's symbol of heartless, meaningless capitalist garbage, also a pedophile. Or the physical education teacher, who tries to feed to the class the ideology that life is a scale balanced by two emotions: love and fear. It's as if Donnie is frustrated with all the ideologies or thought systems being fed into the social structure of his neighborhood, and being schizophrenic is just the thing that pushes him over the edge to go ahead and punish that world for its lies. He sets the motivational speaker's house on fire. He floods the school. This ties into the story his English teacher assigns, The Destructors by Graham Greene:

Donnie comments on the book: "...the fact that they burn the money is ironic. They just wanna see what happens when they turn the world apart and wanna change things."

Striking is the fact that this is exactly what the bullies and assholes of the high school do at the very end. With masks on, they find Gretchen and Donnie in a hidden cellar, grab them and try to attack them. These bullies, in fact, are pissed that Donnie always gets away with everything (such as flooding the school), and everything is immediately blamed at them instead. Sure, they are probably accountable for a lot of awful things that might've happened (including the potential harassment of Gretchen early on) but that doesn't stop them from being angry at Donnie for getting away with certain things, including axing the head of the school's stone mascot. But, ultimately, Donnie's revenge is purer, more meaningful, and isn't just an "acting out". Donnie is literally sick, empty, alone, doing things buried deep in his unconscious mind. Donnie's world is on pause as everyone else goes on unthinkingly. Donnie's world is almost at a stop and all he can do is observe, heavy-headed, with vague and almost impossible attempts at grasping rhyme and reason.

His physics teacher is a person Donnie tries to reach out to as a way or putting some pieces together. This fails, as his teacher is fundamentally stuck to empiricism and objectivity. While the English teacher is another trustworthy person, she herself is dealing with issues within the administration and within herself (see the cartoon bunny scene in which she unconvincely asks Donnie to consider Deux Ex Machina. Gretchen's simpler response is much more convincing).

Donnie does, however, find solace in an old crazy woman - Roberta Sparrow - someone who has lived in the town for many years. She's known as Grandma Death. His physics teacher provides Donnie with her book The Philosophy of Time Travel. 

"I'm seeing stuff, like a lot of really messed up stuff. And the stuff in there is describing what I'm seeing. It can't just be a coincidence."

The fact that Donnie can now recognize his world in another's work is key. Paradoxically, it is Grandma Death who tells Donnie that "every creature on earth dies alone", yet it is Grandma Death's book that makes Donnie feel less alone. Could it be that Grandma Death told him what he needed to hear to scare the bejeezus out of him and get him to thinking of possible ways to die otherwise? Who knows? Tell me.

Donnie Darko is truly a masterpiece and one of my favorite films ever. I'm glad I got this out and was able to write about it. I've seen the film too many times to count, and I think I'm going to put it away for a little while now until I think it is the right occasion to view it again. Interestingly, this last viewing was the most aggravating viewing. Every other time I've watched it I've been suspended by disbelief, enthralled, melancholy in an oddly nostalgic way. This viewing was like a purging, a goodbye to those chapters of my life reflected in the form of cinema: namely, traditional academia and school in general. Maybe I'll look back again, but for now, I'm ready to move forward, onward into the present.

Note: I had to watch this on YouTube, so the film was missing some key scenes. To see the best version, see the Director's Cut. I've a beautiful edition of it here at home:

- F

From Lars Von Trier's Melancholia" (2011)

Leo: Dad said there's nothing to do and nowhere to hide.  

Justine: If your Dad said that, then he's forgotten about something. He's forgotten about the Magic Cave.  

Leo: The Magic Cave? 

Justine: Yup.  

Leo: Is that something everybody can make? 

Justine: Aunt Steelbreaker can. 

- F

Thoughts on Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express" (2004)

The Polar Express is my favorite Christmas movie ever. This one absolutely wins me over. I watched it the night before Christmas Eve (and cried, plenty), and afterwards, I made up my mind to write about it. 

A review from Robert Ebert (The Polar Express 4/4) encapsulates much of how and what I feel  about Zemeckis' film. Some bits:

"The Polar Express" has the quality of a lot of lasting children's entertainment: It's a little creepy. Not creepy in an unpleasant way, but in that sneaky, teasing way that lets you know eerie things could happen. There's a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie. This one creates a world of its own, like "The Wizard of Oz" or "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," in which the wise child does not feel too complacent."

...

And the North Pole looks like a turn-of-the-century German factory town, filled with elves who not only look mass-produced but may have been, since they mostly have exactly the same features (this is not a cost-cutting device, but an artistic decision).

...

Santa, in this version, is a good and decent man, matter-of-fact and serious: a professional man, doing his job. The elves are like the crowd at a political rally. A sequence involving a bag full of toys is seen from a high angle that dramatizes Santa's operation, but doesn't romanticize it; this is not Jolly St. Nick, but Claus Inc. There is indeed something a little scary about all those elves with their intense, angular faces and their mob mentality.

That's the magic of "The Polar Express": It doesn't let us off the hook with the usual reassuring Santa and Christmas cliches. 

All true, all right on the nose. I'll say two things: 1) I haven't read this in its original book version written and illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg, which I'm sure is equally wonderful, and 2) the film is extremely touching, visually. Not beautiful, not pretty, not gorgeous - but - touching.

Visually, the story is sparse and cold and doesn't wow us with sparkles and the usual elements of coziness. Nor does it try to by funny. There is no comedy in this film whatsoever and I am in love with that element of it. (That is not to say there aren't parts where you won't laugh. I laughed, plenty. And not because of any punch line, but true laughter, the pure laughter of those slivered moments in which we think we understand existence.) For those of us who know that true feeling of loneliness - not adult loneliness but a child's loneliness - when all the basic amenities of home are met (mom, dad, sister, house, bed, toys) but yet, there is a lack, and that cold blue light comes through the window, first the sad, heavy twilight, then the deeper blue like an opaque denim colored sky, and lastly the darkest royal, midnight blue... and you're alone and young and thinking and these colors surround you and you know no one can are truly relate to what you feel because you are the only one experiencing this lonely melancholy at exactly this time. And somehow, it's scary, but you feel OK. 

Well, this movie, for me, captures that rare feeling in the first sequences. And the best part (one of many) comes when the Polar Express gets there, and the young boy runs out of his house and, tentatively at first, decides to hop on that mysterious train. Which is warm and cozy and full of warm light and adventure and is moving and and and... it is also full of strangers. All curious, some annoying, but all there in wonderment together. And the story captures this feeling of communal unknowing - everyone - each child, more specifically, coping with this *not knowing* it in a different way. 

Arguably, this movie is not even about Christmas. It is - it is - but underlying it all it isn't. It is about believing in something that you believed in when you were little and then knowing that it's not true and then rekindling that belief in some strange way, doing whatever it takes to find out the real, God-honest truth, even taking some strange, mysterious, and possibly dangerous train away from your home in the middle of the night. For the main character, that's what it's about. The way the story tells it describes this in terms of Santa Claus. Which is endearing and precious because of the culture we grew up in. But there's something more here. 

My favorite character (though I love all of them dearly, as if they were real), is the lonely boy. After the Polar Express stops to pick up our hero, it goes on for a while and all the way on the "other side of the tracks" it stops to pick up a poor boy, thin, with shaggy blonde hair, utterly depressed. He misses the train but luckily, his future friend pulls the emergency brakes and let's him jump on. The lonely boy decides to sit by himself in the last car. His story is something I must think more about, but this boy seems to appreciate everything, though it may not seem so on the outside. He has trust issues, but by the end he makes two friends, who he may not ever see again, yet, we now that those friendships will be cherished somewhere other than just in his memory. Somewhere deeper. 

So much of this movie reminds me of being little. I had plenty of dreams that turned into odd nightmares of riding long, long, long tracks that would suddenly slide down as if a roller coaster, then winding and winding again, and Zemeckis' Polar Express seems to have incepted those dreams from me in a science fiction universe - that's how immediate my reaction was to them. 

There is so much more to say about and write about... like the absurdity of the North Pole. The emptiness of it, like a convention center where the decorations are up but everyone has left, the party ended, until one realizes it has just congregated to another space. The beauty of the North Pole town, a painting of gorgeous townhouse like buildings, but without inhabitants. Waiting to be explored. Inhabited. The entire cleanliness of the place. The hollowness that didn't fear this hollowness. 

Here's the key. The Polar Express' three main characters (and arguably know-it-all boy as well) are not like anyone else. Santa knows this. Santa sees them. Acknowledges them. Speaks to them. Makes sure they are presented with something precious and heart-rending. The train conductor - though he acts as if the proprietor of an egalitarian and equal community - knows that these three (or four, with know-it-all) are, indeed, special. The three don't even know it themselves. But they can feel it. It could be something like - that piercing feeling in your heart when - you're sad because - because you're stellar. And perhaps you realize that you are more rare than you, even you in your brilliant form, would like to admit. Because, really, it can be truly lonely. But maybe you meet a couple (or three) new friends that can match that new knowledge. Maybe your Santa, whatever his form, gives you that eternal present, like the boy's bell, in which you can hear (and see and feel and understand and produce), what many others simply cannot. 

Do me a favor: see the movie. For fun. 

(The ghost character reminiscent of Tom Waits is pretty awesome, too.)

- F 

Thoughts on Tim Burton's "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (1993)

Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is a Halloween classic for many people. Not a cult classic, but a classic nonetheless. While perhaps there is some wariness from the intellectual cohort, whomever they may be at any given time, saying things like “The Nightmare Before Christmas is the most overrated Halloween movie” etc. etc., I think the film deserves some thought. Indeed, much more thought.

I saw the film in the movie theater with my father when I was six years old. I was absolutely fascinated. For one thing, the animation in this film was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Contrary to the flat, two-dimensional animations of Disney’s princess movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas’s use of stop-motion animation added something almost tactile to my experience, really honing in an idea of the man-made, the creation and the creator, and the idea of building, which, I think, are all thematic components of the film itself.

Moreover, the film isn’t quite scary. It is a smart film, and children rarely get to see smart films which draw so much direct attention to the uncanny, and where the uncanny is not directly associated with evil. We all know Jack, the King of Halloween Town. And Sally and the doctor and the Mayor, and all the other citizens of Halloween Town. Although they like to scare people out of their wits, it is not a malicious violence, but something playfully disturbing instead. And furthermore, the story presents these characters as naïve, unaware of any world outside of their own, making them seem innocent and unworldly. To be presented with characters in a film such as this, that aren’t quite aware of the difference between right and wrong, is a refreshing thing for a child to see, especially when it’s explicit content is the ugly, the evil, the menacing, and the grotesque. These are characters disturbing and troubling, yes, but not so much what we can really pinpoint as evil.

It’s important to focus on Jack. Jack, feeling truly depressed after serving as the Pumpkin King of Halloween for many years, begins to dig deep to find out the source of his depression. He sings about it, and from his song we learn that Jack is tired of the sameness every year, the same actions and reactions, the same joke over and over again. I find his lyrics moving, and there’s a reason why his song is titled Jack’s Lament:

There are few who'd deny, at what I do I am the best

For my talents are renowned far and wide

When it comes to surprises in the moonlit night

I excel without ever even trying

With the slightest little effort of my ghostlike charms

I have seen grown men give out a shriek

With the wave of my hand, and a well-placed moan

I have swept the very bravest off their feet.

Yet year after year, it's the same routine

And I grow so weary of the sound of screams

And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King

Have grown so tired of the same old thing…

Oh, somewhere deep inside of these bones

An emptiness began to grow

There's something out there, far from my home

A longing that I've never known

I'm a master of fright, and a demon of light

And I'll scare you right out of your pants

To a guy in Kentucky, I'm Mister Unlucky

And I'm known throughout England and France!

And since I am dead, I can take off my head

To recite Shakespearean quotations -

No animal nor man can scream like I can

With the fury of my recitations.

But who here would ever understand

That the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin

Would tire of his crown, if they only understood

He'd give it all up if he only could

Oh, there's an empty place in my bones

That calls out for something unknown

The fame and praise come year after year

Does nothing for these empty tears…

How can one not feel some sort of sympathy for a creature so obviously stuck in a place that he is sick of? It is not so much a yearning for something more, but instead, a yearning of new knowledge: there’s got to be something besides this, Jack seems to say. It is the fact that his world has lost all meaningfulness because it has become such a routine, something that has come to the point, for him, of going through the motions.

For those that have seen the movie, we know that Jack walks far enough from Halloween town one night, stuck in a daze of melancholy. And we know that he finds the circle of trees, each one with a different door symbolic of the holiday within. He happens to fall through the door with an evergreen tree on it, representing Christmas Town. And, as anyone would be, he becomes full of wonder and awe as he sees happiness, snow, joyous creatures, in-tune song, bright lights, presents, ornaments, and Santa Claus. He becomes determined to figure out how to bring the feeling – wonder and awe – back with him to Halloween Town.

This next part I find fascinating. Jack, in good spirits, attempts to explain Christmas Town to the citizens of Halloween Town, and any child would even know that something is well, not quite right. The citizens think that presents are supposed to be surprises full of dead animals, limbs off of human carcasses… read on:

[JACK]
Listen, there were objects so peculiar
They were not to be believed
All around, things to tantalize my brain
It's a world unlike anything I've ever seen
And as hard as I try
I can't seem to describe
Like a most improbable dream
But you must believe when I tell you this
It's as real as my skull and it does exist
Here, let me show you
This is a thing called a present
The whole thing starts with a box
[DEVIL]
A box?
is it steel?
[WEREWOLF]
Are there locks?
[HARLEOUIN DEMON]
Is it filled with a pox?
[DEVIL, WEREWOLF, HARLEQUIN DEMON]
A pox
How delightful, a pox
[JACK]
If you please
Just a box with bright-colored paper
And the whole thing's topped with a bow
[WITCHES]
A bow?
But why?
How ugly
What's in it?
What's in it?
[JACK]
That's the point of the thing, not to know
[CLOWN]
It's a bat
Will it bend?
[CREATURE UNDER THE STAIRS]
It's a rat
Will it break?
[UNDERSEA GAL]
Perhaps its the head that I found in the lake
[JACK]
Listen now, you don't understand
That's not the point of Christmas land
Now, pay attention
we pick up an oversized sock
And hang it like this on the wall
[MR. HYDE]
Oh, yes! Does it still have a foot?
[MEDIUM MR. HYDE]
Let me see, let me look
[SMALL MR. HYDE]
Is it rotted and covered with gook?
[JACK]
Hmm, let me explain
There's no foot inside, but there's candy
Or sometimes it's filled with small toys
[MUMMY AND WINGED DEMON]
Small toys
[WINGED DEMON]
Do they bite?
[MUMMY]
Do they snap?
[WINGED DEMON]
Or explode in a sack?
[CORPSE KID]
Or perhaps they just spring out
And scare girls and boys
[MAYOR]
What a splendid idea
This Christmas sounds fun
Why, I fully endorse it
Let's try it at once
[JACK]
Everyone, please now, not so fast
There's something here that you don't quite grasp
Well, I may as well give them what they want
And the best, I must confess, I have saved for the last
For the ruler of this Christmas land
Is a fearsome king with a deep mighty voice
Least that's what I've come to understand
And I've also heard it told
That he's something to behold
Like a lobster, huge and red
And sets out to slay with his rain gear on
Carting bulging sacks with his big great arms
That is, so I've heard it's said
And on a dark, cold night
Under full moonlight
He flies into a fog
Like a vulture in the sky
And they call him Sandy Claws
Well, at least they're excited
Though they don't understand
That special kind of feeling in Christmas land
Oh, well...

Jack “gets” it even in some small way: that’s the point of the thing, not to know – he says, when describing what the present is. And there he hits the jackpot, maybe the point, for him too, is to not get so caught up in the meaning of Christmas in order to recreate it, but instead, to enjoy the feeling he received when he experienced it for himself, if only for a short while. But he doesn’t get this, and oh how sorry I felt and still feel upon watching him borrow the Doctor’s supplies and tools and then try to run experiments on the objects, looking for the meaning of Christmas by first reading “the Scientific Method” then trying to analyze a snowglobe or an ornament! The problem with studying these objects is that they are simply visions, nothing more; creations, similar to the ones in Halloween Town, meant to celebrate a holiday, whose meaning itself, must be found out through story and myth.

Jack, who ends up ruining Christmas as he tries to “help” Sandy Claws (even as he tries to fully immerse himself in Christmas Town, he can’t quite relinquish his innate need for the horrific and thus names “Santa Claus”, “Sandy Claws”), finally realizes that he’s made a huge mistake:

[JACK]
What have I done?
What have I done?
How could I be so blind?
All is lost, where was I?
Spoiled all, spoiled all
Everything's gone all wrong
What have I done?
What have I done?
Find a deep cave to hide in
In a million years they'll find me
Only dust and a plaque
That reads, "Here Lies Poor Old Jack"
But I never intended all this madness, never
And nobody really understood, well how could they?
That all I ever wanted was to bring them something great
Why does nothing ever turn out like it should?
Well, what the heck, I went and did my best
And, by God, I really tasted something swell
And for a moment, why, I even touched the sky
And at least I left some stories they can tell, I did
And for the first time since I don't remember when
I felt just like my aold bony self again
And I, Jack, the Pumpkin King
That's right, I am the Pumpkin King, ha, ha, ha
And I just can't wait until next Halloween
'Cause I've got some new ideas
that will really make them scream
And, by God I'm really gonna give it all my might
Uh oh, I hope there's still time to set things right
sandy Claws, hmm

And yes, we know that Jack wasn’t malicious, he didn’t want to ruin anything, he just wanted to have a bit of fun, so we forgive him. And we are happy that he realizes, that yes, he did “taste something swell”, he did “touch the sky”, and he did create “some stories they can tell”. And there again, he hits the jackpot: it’s the story, in the end, that creates the most wonderful feeling of all, and it does not have to produce meaning – it does not have to produce any object at all – but instead wonder and awe in the vision itself.

- F