Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut

First, a word about director's cuts. I'm not generally a huge fan. Most of the time, I grow attached to the version of a film I saw initially, and any further tinkering feels superfluous. After all, if I already liked the movie, then surely the theatrical version was fine. And if I didn't like the movie, why would I want to see 20 minutes more?

There are, of course, exceptions. I prefer the version of Blade Runner without the silly Harrison Ford voice-over. I prefer the DVD's of Lord of the Rings to the regular versions (though these are labeled "extended editions," not director cuts). But overall, the director's cut strikes me as more of a marketing tool than a response to a genuine need for further artistic expression.

Such is the case with Richard Kelly's rejiggered Donnie Darko, an overlong and unneccessarily expository reimagining of a movie that was already great and best left alone.



For the purposes of this review, I'll assume you're all vaguely familiar with the story and characters of Donnie Darko. If not, go rent it immediately. The original version, not the director's cut appearing on DVD Tuesday. It's a real mindfuck of a movie, a teen comedy/coming of age drama/psychological thriller/science fiction freakout about a suburban kid who becomes unstuck in time.

When I first saw the film upon its release in 2001, I was completely blindsided by its intelligence, its creativity and, well, its balls. This was not a mild movie, content to follow the formula and go for crowd-pleasing moments. It's a difficult, complicated film, and while it's entertaining, it's almost purposefully vague, exposing you to interesting, challenging ideas without ever providing explanation or closure.

And this is what the director's cut gets all wrong. Before we go further, I'll give you the authoritative version of Richard Kelly's story:

Donnie Darko thinks he's just a troubled young man who's seeing odd hallucinations, but in actuality, he's the savoir of the human race.

Every rare once in a while, for no real understandable reason, a portal opens up in space-time. This portal creates an alternate reality, what the movie refers to as a "tangent universe." This tangent universe resembles our own objective reality, but events in it differ from how they would normally unfold in typical space-time. For example, let's say that, in our reality, I will walk to the store tomorrow to buy bananas. If a portal were to appear tonight taking me into a tangent reality, during that same walk to the store tomorrow, I would buy oranges. Or get hit by a bus on the way to the store.

And the more different things that happen to alter reality, the more unstable the tangent universe becomes. Finally, it collapses upon itself, and the only way the universe can be saved is if a pre-selected individual goes through the portal, returning in time to the moment of the portal's origin to close the gap and reset space-time.

And Donnie Darko is that individual. What he sees are not hallucinations, but the ripples of a different reality, the universe's attempt to close the aberrant portal and return to normalcy.

In the original version of the film, released in 2001 to stunned and appreciative indie audiences nation-wide, none of this was spelled out clearly. There was no use of the term "tangent universe" at all, and all of this philosophy of time travel remained exclusively in the background.

Delightfully, this left the film up for a massive variety of explanations and theories. I thought it was about a troubled guy with delusions of granduer the first time I saw it, and came to understand it as a Christ allegory set in a high school. The formation of the portal is visualized in the film as a large jet engine crashing through the roof of Donnie's house. The "tangent universe" forms because, though he is meant to die in the house, he was sleepwalking at the time. So, when he returns to the portal, he returns to his own demise, renewing the world by killing himself.

This interpretation still pretty much holds, but many others do not. I read a theory online several months ago (which I cannot find a link for...sorry...) that the film was about Donnie's incestuous attraction to his sister. (Side note: most of the basis for this theory was Frank, a six-foot tall rabbit in the tangent universe and the boyfriend of Donnie's sister in our reality). Kelly basically kills that by making the time travel plot explicit.

He goes about this in several hackneyed ways. The most egregious change to the film is the insertion of several montage sequences, in which we see actual text excerpts from a fictional book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, explaining portals and tangent universes. Why would Kelly think adding writing into his movie would make it more enjoyable for fans? It makes no sense.

Apart from contextual changes like these, not much else is different. There is one added scene I liked a great deal, in which Donnie's dad gives him advice for dealing with assholes, and a few other brief moments that add some depth to the supporting characters. Also, there's an odd change to the soundtrack: the film used to open with Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon," but now this song appears during a crucial late scene in the film, replaced in the beginning by a different 80's college rock song. This didn't really bother me, and all the music used in both versions of the film is wonderfully appropriate and pleasant, but it felt a bit like change for the sake of change.

If you watch either version of Donnie Darko, you're seeing a great film, probably one of my favorites of the decade thus far. But, particularly for viewers new to the film, I think you're better served by the original version, which plays more like a dark, confused teen comedy-drama than a trippy piece of far-out metaphysics. This is one DVD I mercifully won't have to purchase twice.