Rational Action

Yesterday I watched Donnie Darko for the second time in 8 days. It made more sense this time. Here’s an interview with the writer/director and an essay about it. I think the key has something to do with the motion paths. Everyone has them, but for some reason Donnie is capable of seeing them. As his teacher notes, by being able to see your path into the future, you are given the option to choose against it. So it seems Donnie is forced into a world where God gives him no predetermined direction and he must choose for himself. Furthermore, his conversation with his psychotherpawhatever provides this choice quote:

Dr. Lilian Thurman: The search for God is absurd?
Donnie: It is if everyone dies alone.

So Donnie doesn’t quite fit into the movie’s setting, which Drew Barrymore’s character explains as one of apathy. That all of this occurs in 1988 in the middle of a doomed Democratic presidential bid (President Dukakis?) only reinforces the conversative undertones.

Would it be correct to view the movie as atheistic and existential? I’m still a bit perplexed. Why does Donnie die? When he sees the motion path in front of him, does he get to choose whether to follow it? Or is he forced along for the ride? It would seem that the answer to that question would decide whether the movie was existential or not. Help!

Helpful thought: maybe Donnie was aware that only a chance saved him from being hit by that jet engine. Thus he spends the movie trying to cope with death (idea borrowed from the essay linked above).

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2003 at 1:07 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.