Moreta
Admiral
Squirrel Extraordinaire
Ickle Squiggle
Posts: 1,618
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Post by Moreta on Nov 20, 2006 22:13:31 GMT -5
So I finally got round to watching this film today... What can I say? One of the most bizarre two hours of my life.
Im fairly sure I understood the film, but it does leave you with some seriously unanswered questions and of course, theres the major paradox of the time travel itself.
I haven't decided entirely what I thought of this film, there are some great points to it, but I just feel its rather let down by the serious lack of explanations present. Perhaps that was the director's intention, to leave you questioning it, but I feel there comes a point when there are too many unexplained happenings and the film almost falls apart just from the fact that it doesn't quite make sense without those explanations. I feel the film is balancing on a knife edge and I cant quite decide which side of that knife its actually on.
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xkamelx
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Check Those Corners
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Post by xkamelx on Nov 21, 2006 15:01:57 GMT -5
Morry, I liked this movie, but found it indescribably hard to understand. I haven't seeing it in years, but I'm still a little confused, while the story is beautiful, with a beautiful ending, I can gather that Donnie's timeline was altered by the doing of the Rabbit, who is the one who puts him up to his sinister acts, but as a result of the timeline being altered, Donnie has to make a difficult decision, as the world will come to an end. He has to go back in time, and set things right, like saving his girlfriend from death, but by doing so, she would have never of known him as he did it before they met.
It's almost as if Donnie was meant to die when the plane engine hit the house in the beginning of the movie, but the bunny rabbit prevented him from dying for whatever reason. Maybe that's what he meant by 'then end of the world'. Or maybe he meant the end of Donnie's world. I've went back and watched the special features of the movie, and it was said that the movie purposely left alot of things up to assumption, for us to make our best guess. There is so much of the movie that is not explained, like who the hell was that rabbit. What were those wormhole things coming out of peoples' chests? And the kicker, that jet engine that fell into Donnie's house, was really from the future. Remember his mom and sister was flying home from Star Search or something in Hollywood, when the engine fell off, yet it ended up traveling back to 3 or 4 weeks before, killing Donnie, as he traveled back to wait for it, and to die. Strange.
Ans yes, it's messed up by that setting things right like Donnie did, Patrick Swazy's character not only lives, but his house never gets burned down by Donnie, thus his child porn ring was never exposed, which means he goes on being that towns hero of inspiration and hope, or whatever that BS he was preaching was What was the title of that time travel book Donnie was reading? I forget the title of it, but they actually produced on online version of thwe book we can go and read. I read it a few years ago, and it was just as hard to understand as the movie was.
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Ramirez
Cadet
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, you've got to kill to stay alive.
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Post by Ramirez on Dec 3, 2006 6:55:11 GMT -5
I too was slightly confused by this surreal film... I had to watch it many times over just to develop a better understanding on it. And I've come to the conclusion that the ending is however you interpret it.
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ConqueringWolf
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Merry Meet And Merry Part, Until We Merry Meet Again!
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Post by ConqueringWolf on Dec 29, 2006 8:09:44 GMT -5
I just recently watched this movie myself and was also confused about parts of it so I did a little internet research and found there are a few places on the internet that explain it quite well, here is an explanation that is supposed to be from the director's cut of the movie where it is explained in detail. This explanation is a summary from the Director's Cut commentary where the director Richard Kelly and Kevin Smith explain the events of the movie. The jet engine falls by accident from an alternate universe into Donnie’s universe rupturing the very fabric of time and space. The jet engine is known as the Artifact. The introduction of the jet engine into the primary universe causes the formation of a tangent universe (The introduction of the alternate universe from which the jet engine came from.) in the primary universe. This will inevitably cause the destruction of everything from the source of the corruption known as the tangent vortex (the black hole). This rupture was caused by technologically advanced unknown beings from the future. The unknown beings are able to ascertain this disruption. They need to create the right sequence of events in order to get Donnie to fix their mess. So they are using Gretchen as an ensurance trap to make sure that Donnie will make the right decision. They know that Gretchen's death and Donnie's killing of Frank are essential to get Donnie in the right mentality to do what is necessary. These beings are further able to manipulate Frank, Karen Pomeroy, Jim Cunningham, and many more to lead Donnie to make the right choice. However these manipulated people still have a degree of free will and are able to make their own choices. The unknown beings from the future decide to copy the image of the dead Frank in a bunny suit to use as their Messenger in communicating with Donnie. Using Frank’s image they manipulate Donnie, who as the Living Receiver is getting information from these beings. This is why he has visions in the movie. Donnie receives the power to control water from the Messenger. At the end of the film Donnie uses his mastery over water and creates a time portal at the tangent vortex sending the jet engine back in time and space from the tangent to the primary universe. The jet engine then arrives in the past and kills Donnie. Both the jet engine’s arrival and Donnie’s death were necessary for time to be corrected according to Richard Kelly’s commentary in the Director’s Cut. Instead of the Artifact coming by accident from another universe and defying the laws of physics, the time portal resets time and offers a reasonable path for the jet engine to go from the tangent (alternate) universe to the primary universe. Donnie’s death then balances out the entrance of the jet engine. The alternate universe still exists in some shape with its jet engine crossing into another universe; but the alternate universe is no longer a part of the primary universe and continues once more to exist as a separate entity. Those that were displaced into the tangent universe reawaken in the primary universe with but a fading memory of their experience. These following comments are answers to questions that have been asked about Donnie Darko. The reason is that it was an accident caused by the unknown beings from the future using advanced technology. Time and space are not perfect and according to the director every once in a while something crosses over from an alternate universe into another universe. What most likely happened is that the jet airliner got destroyed in an alternate dimension and then its jet engine fell through a small tear in the fabric of time and space and then ended up in Donnie's universe. The unknown beings cannot sort out the problem themselves because they are not from Donnie's time period. Seriously, in a similar situation a time traveler is not going to go back in time to the Mayan Empire, show everyone his advance technology, accidentally leave some technology behind, possibly get himself killed, have people write and talk about him and then have all his actions end up destroying the whole time and space continuum. The unknown beings do not want to destroy time and space they want to fix it, so they are not going to interfere in the past directly but rather indirectly by using the Messenger. The first time that the Artifact fell, it came by accident. The Messenger had to save Donnie so that he would create a logical reason for the appearance of the jet engine. Donnie does this by creating the time portal and sending the jet engine through the portal. This gives the jet engine a reason for being in Donnie's universe, instead of it accidentally falling from an alternate universe into Donnie's universe. Dr. Thurman suspected all along that Donnie Darko was a special person. Be it that she thought Donnie was a genius, a depressed teenager with great potential, a person with extraordinary abilities or the Living Receiver we do not know. However Dr. Thurman knew that Donnie was distraught and wanted to make him feel better without causing him to be limited in his abilities and become an addict to some pill, so Dr. Thurman used placebos to try to help Donnie hoping that the placebo effect might get Donnie to feel better. Dr. Thurman is one of the Manipulated Living being used by the unknown beings to help Donnie achieve his true destiny. In the Director's Cut commentary the director Richard Kelly mentions that Cherita Chen is getting verbally abused and that this is why she starts wearing the earmuffs. He also mentions that she acts as a catalyst for Donnie to realize who he really is, understand what his personal views are and what he must do. Her interactions with Donnie give us further insight into his character. Cherita Chen also likes Donnie Darko and has been keeping track of him at times, thus being used as the unknown beings' eyes and ears on Donnie’s activities. The unknown beings are not aliens; we do not know what they are. Kelly refers to them several times as the Deus Ex Machina, the unseen beings, and the beings from the future. Kelly never states what they are and they are never shown in the film, so what they are exactly is open to interpretation. They could be god, people from the future, a government agency in the near future, extra-terrestrials, humans that have evolved into a new life form, a new life form that has evolved on earth, the sons of gods, Living Receivers that have mastered time, or any number of possibilities. www.imdb.com/title/tt0246578/board/thread/59973702
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