Donnie Darko

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Movie
German title Donnie Darko
Alternative title:
Donnie Darko: Fear the dark
Original title Donnie Darko
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2001
length Theatrical Version:
108 minutes
Director’s Cut :
128 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Richard Kelly
script Richard Kelly
production Adam Fields ,
Nancy Juvonen ,
Sean McKittrick
music Michael Andrews
camera Steven B. Poster
cut Sam Bauer ,
Eric Strand
occupation
synchronization
chronology

Successor  →
S. Darko

Donnie Darko is a film of American director Richard Kelly from the year 2001 . The film is Kelly's directorial debut and combines elements of American high school and science fiction films and is a psychogram of the 16-year-old student Donald J. Darko. He is in psychotherapeutic treatment and takes psychotropic drugs . In the course of the film he experiences increasingly bizarre and terrifying extrasensory , sometimes hallucinous perceptions - so an initially unknown, mostly mute "friend" named Frank appears repeatedly , who, wearing a rabbit costume and a kind of skull mask (see Bunny Man ), carries out destructive assignments granted. Finally, the individual, apparently confused plot elements converge and lead to a surprising ending that allows a variety of interpretations.

action

The action takes place in October 1988. Donnie Darko is an intelligent and creative, but mentally unstable teenager who lives in a small town in Middlesex, Virginia with his parents, an older and a younger sister . He is treated in sessions and with medication by a psychiatrist . On the night of October 2nd, the engine of an airplane crashed into his family's house and hit Donnie's room. He only survived because the night before a creature called "Frank" appeared to him in a rabbit costume. "Frank" made Donnie leave the house. At dawn he wakes up on a golf course. When Donnie returns home, the airplane part is being removed from his room. Donnie has other visions of Frank, who mostly speaks in riddles. He predicts the end of the world, which will take place in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.

Frank gets Donnie to break a water pipe at school. Since Donnie's English course under the teacher Karen Pomeroy had recently analyzed the short story " The Destructors ", in which a house is deliberately destroyed by flooding, suspicions are directed against the students. But nothing can be proven for Donnie.

A new student, Gretchen Ross, joins Donnie's class. Because of the flooding of the school, there is an opportunity for a conversation between the two of them. It turns out that she and her mother moved to town under a new name after her stepfather stabbed her mother with a knife. Donnie and Gretchen become friends and become a couple.

Kitty Farmer, a teacher, aims to introduce students to the simple, hackneyed phrase-based life support theories of Jim Cunningham, a locally famous author of life guides. Donnie thinks his advice on coping with life is silly and eventually insults the teacher. He also disrupts a lecture by guest speaker Cunningham in the school auditorium by ridiculing his tips. Many notice that Donnie's behavior is getting more and more strange.

After Frank asked him if he believed in time travel , Donnie investigates. This, for example, through discussions with his physics teacher Monnitoff, who ultimately refuses to continue on the grounds that it “endangers his job”. When he parted, Monnitoff gave him a book on The Philosophy of Time Travel . Donnie finds out that the age-old, crazy-looking Roberta Sparrow, known locally as "Grandma Death," wrote this book, and delves into it. Frank advises him to write a letter to Roberta Sparrow. One evening, Donnie, previously diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, sees tubular bundles of rays emerging from people's chests, apparently showing where they are headed in the near future. Such a transparent and fuzzy tube also emerges from Donnie's chest. He follows her into his parents' bedroom, where he finds a gun and takes it for himself.

When Donnie and Gretchen visit a cinema together to watch the horror film Dance of the Devils , Donnie sees Frank in the rabbit costume again, after Gretchen fell asleep in the cinema chair, who suddenly sits next to the couple. Donnie asks him to take off his mask. A young man appears underneath, seriously injured in his right bloodshot eye. On Frank's orders, Donnie leaves the theater to burn down Cunningham's house. He returns before Gretchen wakes up.

Karen Pomeroy has been accused of incorrect teaching methods . The principal dismisses her. When Donnie happens to meet her on her last day at work, the term Cellar Door is on the blackboard. When asked by Donnie, she said that a famous linguist once said that this was the most beautiful word in the English language.

During the investigation of the fire, a studio for the production of child pornography material was discovered in Cunningham's house . Mrs. Farmer, a devoted supporter of Cunningham, thinks this is a conspiracy and wants to defend him in court. Therefore, Donnie's mother has to fly to the finals of a talent competition as her replacement with a school girls dance group in which the little sister Samantha Darko is part of the dance. Donnie and his older sister have the house to themselves and throw a party the night before Halloween . Donnie and Gretchen sleep together. Because Donnie soon has a vision, he drives with Gretchen and two friends to Roberta Sparrow's house, but she doesn't open the door. Donnie remembers the cellar door, that's where the teenagers get in. They are attacked by two classmates whom they already know as hooligans.

As a car approaches, Donnie says: “ Deus ex machina .” In the middle of the street is Roberta Sparrow, who is apparently just fetching Donnie's letter from her mailbox. When the driver evades her, he runs over Gretchen, who is lying on the ground. The two hooligans have already fled. Two shocked young men in Halloween costumes get out of the car. The passenger calls the driver Frank: He looks like the man in Donnie's visions and also wears the same rabbit costume (as a Halloween disguise), but seems to be a normal young man, frightened by the girl's death. Donnie, appalled by Gretchen's death, kills him with a shot in the eye.

Roberta Sparrow tells Donnie that there is not much time left. Donnie drives Gretchen's body to the outskirts and watches from there how a long black cloud formation, from which a hurricane emerges, forms over the city. The plane in which Donnie's mother is sitting suddenly gets out of control: a turbine has fallen off. Donnie watches the turbine fall. Now you can see some scenes of the film accelerated in reverse order until you get back to the action on October 2nd in Donnie's room. This time he doesn't leave his room, but laughs and waits for his death.

Various characters from the film are shown who are dreaming or waking up from nightmares. You seem vaguely aware of Donnie's visions. Cunningham appears to be showing remorse by crying, and Frank strokes his right eye. In the morning, Donnie's body is removed. Gretchen Ross happens to be passing by on her bike. When she asked, she was given the victim's name. When asked whether she knew “Donnie Darko”, she answers “No” with a short delay. She waves slowly to the grieving family, Donnie's mother returns the greeting.

Interpretation of the director

Author and director Richard Kelly gave the film his own interpretation of what happened, even if he does not want to exclude other interpretations. For this “official” interpretation, the official website has been created, on which some further fictitious information about the events in the film is given, including an excerpt from an “investigation report” about the crashed engine and some chapters from the fictional book The Philosophy of the Time travel . The latter were also incorporated into the “Director's Cut”, so that this suggests Kelly's interpretation.

Accordingly, when the engine crashes at midnight on October 2, 1988, a "tangent universe " is formed, an unstable type of parallel universe that collapses after the period specified by Frank on October 30, 1988 (one day before Halloween) and itself, but also destroys the “real” universe. From this point on, the film takes place in the Tangent Universe. Donnie is the "chosen one" who was given special abilities by that event, such as strength and clairvoyant powers. Frank and Gretchen, who will die within the Tangent Universe, can connect with Donnie through the fourth dimensional construct . All other people around Donnie are also "manipulated", their task is to move him through various statements and actions to close the tangent universe again. The metal turbine serves as an artifact that can move between the tangent universe and the primary universe. Donnie ends up sacrificing himself to save everyone else - especially Frank and Gretchen, who died in the Tangent Universe.

Trivia

  • With a budget of $ 4.5 million, the film Donnie Darko was filmed in just 28 days of shooting, which is very fast for a feature film of this size.
  • While the film achieved only moderate success in the US, it was better received in the UK . The film never made it to the cinemas in Germany, but became more and more popular after it was released on DVD.
  • Before its regular release in the US on October 26, 2001, the film was shown on January 19, 2001 at the Sundance Festival and on July 21 at the Fantasy Film Festival in Germany.
  • The original film poster was labeled “Donnie Darko” in an Arabic-style font. Due to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , the font was changed - the original font was retained in the film.
  • With a budget of an estimated US $ 4.5 million, which is low, especially by US standards, Richard Kelly was initially unable to record all the titles intended for the film's soundtrack due to the high license costs. It was only the film's financial success, which had increased considerably over the years, that allowed him to create a director's cut that was 20 minutes longer in 2004 , which included the originally intended title in addition to other scenes. Various scenes have been dealt with longer, so the dialogues take longer.
  • Donnie Darko was the first leading role in a major film for Jake Gyllenhaal . His sister Maggie plays his older sister in the film.
  • At the beginning of the film, Donnie's mother reads the book It (German title: Es ) and Donnie's father reads the book The Tommyknockers (German title: Das Monstrum ) - both novels by Stephen King .
  • Donnie's sister mentions at dinner: “I'm for Dukakis” (in the original language: “I'm voting for Dukakis.”). This refers to Michael Dukakis , American Democratic Party candidate from 1988.
  • In the scene in which the new classmate Gretchen Ross is introduced to the class, you can see a poster hanging about the German surrealist painter Max Ernst in the background to the left of the classroom door.
  • When Donnie met his teacher, Dr. Monnitoff asked about time travel, you can see on the table the book A Brief History of Time (German title: A Brief History of Time ) by Stephen Hawking are.
  • A movie theater, visit the Donnie with Gretchen, run the films The Evil Dead (The Evil Dead) and The Last Temptation of Christ (The Last Temptation of Christ) . Short excerpts of the former can also be seen.
  • The arcade racing game that can be seen in several sequences of the film is the Out Run , which was extremely popular in the late 1980s .
  • Compared to the stylistically similar film Lost Highway by director David Lynch , which appeared four years earlier, there is also a connection between the end and the beginning of the plot in Donnie Darko , whereby the story forms a closed circle. The course of this content-related circle is not uniform, but changing, viewed symbolically like a Möbius strip .

music

The soundtrack for the film was released during 2002. In addition to the soundtrack, the following songs can be heard:

At the end of the film, Michael Andrews and Gary Jules played a cover version of the Tears-for-Fears piece " Mad World ", which made it to number 1 in the English charts in December 2003 and was also very successful in Germany. The director's cut version also contains the song "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS , the songs "Under the Milky Way" and "The Killing Moon" are used as background music in different places compared to the original film version.

synchronization

The synchronization was produced by PPA Film, Munich under the dialogue direction by Frank Schaff and based on the dialogue book by Sabine Leyrer .

actor role Voice actor
Jake Gyllenhaal Donnie Darko Johannes Raspe
Jena Malone Gretchen Ross Angela Wiederhut
Mary McDonnell Rose Darko Dagmar Dempe
Holmes Osborne Eddie Darko Thomas Rauscher
James Duval Frank Frank Schaff
Patrick Swayze Jim Cunningham Wolfgang Müller
Katharine Ross Dr. Lilian Thurman Dagmar Heller
Drew Barrymore Karen Pomeroy Claudia Lössl
Beth Grant Kitty Farmer Marion Hartmann
Maggie Gyllenhaal Elizabeth Darko Melanie Manstein
Daveigh Chase Samantha Darko Jacqueline Belle
Lara Wurmer (New Scenes)
Noah Wyle Prof. Kenneth Monnitoff Martin Halm
Alex Greenwald Seth Devlin Dirk Meyer
David Moreland Director Cole Claus Brockmeyer
Arthur Taxier Dr. Don Fisher Walter von Hauff
David St. James Bob Garland Hans-Rainer Müller
Stuart Stone Ronald Fisher Butz Combrinck
Gary Lundy Sean Smith Jan Makino
Seth Rogen Ricky Danforth Hubertus von Lerchenfeld

Reviews

James Berardinelli wrote on ReelViews that the film was partly a psychological thriller , partly a science fiction film and partly a mystery film . He mostly focuses on Donnie Darko's relationships with his sisters, parents and girlfriend. Drew Barrymore is the biggest box-office magnet , but the character she plays appears more often than the plot requires. Berardinelli praised the “first-class” special effects , which proved that an independent science fiction film with special effects is also possible. He compared some of the effects with those in the film Abyss .

The film service judges: "The film gives no answers, on the contrary". He fights against a “one-dimensional interpretation of life” and “mindless and bigoted morality”.

The Cinema ruled: "To the surprise ending sets the studded with film quotes directorial debut of Richard Kelly a confusing trail of delusions and theories about time travel. Launched shortly after September 11, 2001, the complex work flopped in the cinema, but became a cult hit on DVD. A longer Director's Cut was released there in 2005. [...] Conclusion: Original, ingeniously spun thriller "

Awards

Saturn Award :

  • 2002: Special award as Young Filmmaker's Showcase for Richard Kelly
  • 2006: Nomination for Best DVD Release (Special Edition)

Independent Spirit Award :

  • 2002: Nomination for Best First Film and Best First Screenplay for Richard Kelly
  • 2002: Nomination for Best Actor for Jake Gyllenhaal

DVD Champion :

  • 2004 Won in the International Film category

continuation

In 2009, a sequel entitled S. Darko was released directly for the DVD market. It's about Donnie's sister Samantha, who leaves town to escape the eerie visions that already plagued Donnie. The main role of Samantha is taken over by Daveigh Chase , as in Donnie Darko , Ed Westwick plays another role . Director and writer Richard Kelly is not involved in this sequel and had refused to shoot a sequel. Chris Fisher directed it.

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Donnie Darko (2001) - Release Info . IMDb . Retrieved January 12, 2016.
  2. ↑ Release certificate for Donnie Darko . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , September 2003 (PDF; test number: 95 144 V / DVD).
  3. ↑ JRR Tolkien wrote in an essay in 1955: “Most English-speaking people, for instance, will admit that cellar door is 'beautiful', especially if dissociated from its sense (and its spelling). More beautiful than, say, sky, and far more beautiful than beautiful. Well then, in Welsh for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent. "~ On the appearance and sounds of words
  4. ↑ Roberta Sparrow - The philosophy of time travel on donnie-darko.de
  5. ↑ TV magazine TV Spielfilm , No. 9, April 17, 2020: Program announcement Tip of the Day , TV Spielfilm Verlag GmbH, Hamburg. P. 171
  6. ^ Donnie Darko (2001) . Box Office Mojo. Retrieved August 25, 2009.
  7. ↑ http://history.sundance.org/films/2264
  8. ↑ To live or die in the 80s
  9. ↑ a b c http://www.dasmanifest.com/03/1136.php
  10. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated November 28, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ernieputto.de
  11. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 22, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stern.de
  12. ↑ Donnie Darko - Fear the Dark . German dubbing files. Retrieved January 12, 2009.
  13. ↑ James Berardinelli, ReelViews
  14. ↑ arte.tv film cycle “Time Travel”: Donnie Darko ( Memento of the original from November 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.arte.tv
  15. ^ Cinema, film review

Web links

Wikiquote: Donnie Darko  - Quotes