Starring Jake Gyllenhaal
Y
A masterpiece then, but one which you have to watch eleven times with your pupils plastered to the flat-screen in order to understand even one tenth of what’s happening. Donnie only works it out by the end, and he’s the lead. Don’t feel bad.
Feel uncomfortable, warm and slightly deranged. Feel sad, fearful and strangely elated. Richard Kelly is a whiz kid of new, drawing on a shining, luminescent pool of ideas and concepts through his first film, always distracting, always obtuse but somehow making absolute sense in the back of your head. Its many things at once, which makes it simultaneously hard to grasp and incredibly satisfying. Small town intellectual debauchery, super-heroes, fat people, time-streams and dying love all bubble to the surface at different points to remind you of things you’ve felt and other things that never existed, but stuff you know anyway deep down on the trampoline-in-a-swimming pool of your subconscious. Stylistically it’s tough to remember how different this felt when it came out; everything’s lit in the same impending darkness, the score is warped and nagging but leavened with John Hughes aping soundtrack bliss, the acting has rarely been bettered by everyone involved. The years have been kind, stuff like ‘SOMETIMES I DOUBT YOUR COMMITMENT TO SPARKLE MOTION’ sticking out, whilst others, like the conversation about the perfection of ‘Cellar Door’ go forgotten, another philosophical dead end that could break apart in a shower of bricks at if you looked hard enough.
Film as puzzle box, half the fun in the years since has been in trying to decipher what it’s really about. The Director knows, but the funniest part is that he’s probably wrong, or his truth’s only another part of the problem. Like tripping or burning or falling off some twin peaks the real worth’s in the feeling the film gives off the first time, the sensual delights of its visuals and soundtrack and doorways to another world, one that feels like parallel history, myth and yesterday all at the same time. That Kelly’s never mastered the same feeling again is no surprise, because nobody has and probably never will, but luckily its depths and unique atmosphere give it almost unending re-watch value, a time-loop in your own life that’ll you’ll never find a jet engine for.
But if you must, here’s a thing.
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