Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko is a paradox in film form. It poses the riddle, which philosophy has never managed to solve; how can the meaningful and meaningless exist simultaneously? Everything in the film, every conversation, symbol and every unexplained phenomenon seems to hint at some underlying truth, but the closer you get to understanding it the further away it becomes. I believe the film's most potent symbol, far more potent than the rabbit, time travel or the tangent universe, is the labyrinth. Donnie travels within a world, which superficially appears to have some logic but in actual fact becomes more complex the further he delves. He is both Theseus, in the maze searching for an exit and the beast, that awaits him inside. He travels through existence trying to find an escape route only to discover that the labyrinth is not a physical place but simply our condition. We walk through life searching for understanding, believing that it is what will free us, but every answer only leads to a new set of questions. We don't leave the maze; we merely discover how immense it is. The thing that most captivates me is that it is a film about paradox. The idea that maybe freedom can only come through acceptance. In modern times we understand freedom as being absent from boundaries, Donnie Darko presents us with a different scenario where in fact Donnie understands the limits of his being so well that he is empowered by them. His freedom comes not from avoiding destiny but through acceptance, paradox found all over philosophy in the idea that surrender can become a form of strength, and in acceptance highest possible act of choice. It's a film which can also be interpreted as a metaphor for consciousness, to have consciousness is to have a split self, one which acts and one which witnesses. Donnie exists as that divided self he is both the performer and the observer, he lives a life whilst also witnessing his life and questioning its authenticity, this produces a powerfully detached reality, it's as though the world we are inhabiting is one that has become alien. The horror of Donnie Darko is not that the world is going to end but that we had never properly understood the world around us in the first place. Maybe it is because of this that the film is so haunting, perhaps because it deals with one of the profound contradictions in life, we are a finite species capable of the imagination of infinity, we seek stability whilst knowing all is ephemeral, we desire certainty but live in a world of uncertainty, and we crave the answer whilst understanding implicitly that the mysterious is part of meaning. I now consider Donnie Darko less a film about time travel and more about paradox, it is a film that seems to endlessly cycle round on itself, folding back like a Mbius strip, always blurring the lines between start and finish, cause and effect and free will and destiny. We are left with the chilling thought that the contradictions that we spend our lives trying to resolve are not flaws in reality but inherent characteristics of it.