Donnie Darko Meanings

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2007-02-24 01:55:13     Rating:

This shows that everything happens for a reason and that you can't change the past.

Yeah it is about that. Kinda like the butterfly effect. If Donnie would had lived, he would have taken the lives of about 4 people. His mother, his girlfriend, and Frank. I think his sister already will die, but she might not go on the plane if her brother recently died. So the cost of his life means the life of 3 others are spared. I LOVE DONNIE DARKO!

Submitted by: sailorguy370
Added: 2008-06-29 22:57:38     Rating:

I thought that Donnie Darko seemed to be a movie whose purpose was to defile the concreteness of time and space, and also to present reality as an abstract and malleable object. Throughout the movie Donnie travels throughout time and space whether through foreshadowing symbolism, or through his imaginary (or not so imaginary) friend Frank. I think the movie conveys the truth about the inconclusiveness of reality. The movie seems to suggest that multiple realities are taking place all at once, example; Donnie has the choice to either live or die during the airplane crash, and that decision was a fork in the road in determining how Donnie would create reality. Since it possible for him to make either choice, both realities exist at the same time. So Donnie would both be dead and stay alive, but in separate realities. The reason that Donnie was seeing the apparitions and was a social outcast was that he had an acute sense of these seperate alternate realities. This is what Frank may have been, a visitor from a separate reality that he was choosing. Through Donnie's unique power, he was able to live both realities at once.

If you love the movie I would recommend watching the directors cut edition, there are deleted scenes that help define the themes more clearly.

Submitted by: nicksp13
Added: 2009-04-14 01:46:18     Rating:

Ok I haven't watched the movie in about a week, so I just went over what was on the top of my head. Here goes.

In my opinion, this movie was about… time travel/God’s big plan. When Donnie met Frank the rabbit, who at the time was dead and only Donnie could see, he was lured out of his house, down the road to talk to the mysterious rabbit. While Frank told Donnie how long the world had left, which in my opinion was because just by Donnie leaving his house to meet with Frank, he had broken what was SUPPOSE to happen, causing everything in the world to be effected.
With Frank allowing Donnie to see things, such as others and his own direction in life, Donnie had the opportunity to defy the direction he was chosen.


(Here comes the time travel)
Frank was a normal kid, but only at the ending of the movie. Throughout the movie, he was a ghost, giving Donnie orders and providing important information.
Donnie was the one who had messed up Frank’s eye, when he shot him after running over and killing his girlfriend near the end of the movie. The end of the world was the world being set to an earlier point, when Frank and Donnie threw everything off, this time involving no disruptions, and having everything happen the way it should have the first time. Donnie being in his room when the jet engine hit. The ending was sad and unexpected, but it seemed as though Donnie’s mom and Donnie’s girlfriend remembered each other before the world ending and being basically reset?


Did they remember each other? Was it just a dramatic stare? That’s what makes the movie great, you don’t know.

The aim of this film was to show the hidden nature of things. Reality is objective and subjective, but true reality is a whirling wiggly series of lines always moving changing,lawless. We make the laws, but when the laws are broken we are left in a position to see things from infinite angles.

Submitted by: Paper1
Added: 2009-07-12 20:18:49     Rating:

The interpretation I've heard is to do with God. In the film God looks away for just a second and as a result Donnie has free will, gets out of bed and doesn't die as God had intended. However by doing so, God had been proved fallible, and therefore not omniscient.

The film continues that God no longer controls the flow of events, as he is no longer all powerful and knowing, and so creation begins to destruct. In a bid to avoid this God manipulates the living and the dead to encourage Donnie to realise his fate.

Towards the end, as the universe destructs, God creates a time portal near the plane to have the engine sucked through, and Donnie realises that in order to prevent the destruction of the universe he must die.

Submitted by: manamongkings
Added: 2009-09-18 22:42:34     Rating:

I think that the idea of time travel is a red herring. Its used to make the movie appear to have more levels than it has, and subsequently it appears (and is) profound.

The movie is about a boy coming to understand why he must die. Why he has to get killed (by a jet engine) in order for a series of events, which are more tragic, to not take place.

Truly a brilliant movie.

Submitted by: friendsfreak
Added: 2009-11-16 21:16:23     Rating:

I really don't think this move has anything to do with time travel. Time travel is a science fiction topic, and I really doubt that you could call Donnie Darko a science fiction film. It is a look at the world through the eyes of a teenager.

There are lots of clues suggesting this, like the fact that Donnie lives in a town called Middlesex, or the fact that the song "Mad World," whose original artists say the song portrays the world as seen by a teenager, was redone specifically for the movie.

We are supposed to understand that the story of Donnie Darko merely expands and elaborates a story that surrounds us every day in the confused and depressed minds of teenagers. The story merely gives personification and metaphor to the mental process of a suicidal teen.

Donnie's life continues to spiral downward until he is taken to the point of death, but he evades it at the last second. This mirrors the story of a suicidal teen. However, Donnie is still not out of danger, as immediately winds up face to face with the rabbit, a personification of the darkness and confusion that fills his mind. And the first thing this creation tells him is that his time is limited. He made have escaped death once, but it will come. His universe will, in time, collapse.

As the story progresses, Donnie falls deeper and deeper into confusion and depression. Since Donnie's world reflects his personality, the very fabric of time and space around him begins to distort as well. Finally, Donnie's time expires. He loses touch with reality, sinking below his nihilistic view of life as his world crashes down around him. The parallel universe representing his view of life has died, and Donnie laughs, finally deciding that life is not worth all of the pain and suffering. And with that, Donnie dies. But even his death contributes to the theme. The plane engine falls on him because of the portal that sprang from his the parallel universe that represents his mind. So in the end, Donnie is killed, crushed beneath his own cynical view of the world.

Submitted by: Andi
Added: 2010-03-18 12:44:26     Rating:

I think its an excellent piece into the mind of a schizophrenic. The fact that Donnie is a sleepwalker is symbolic of 'the splitting of the mind' in schizophrenia. It's when Donnie splits, he meets Frank who tells him the world is going to end as well as 'show' to him that all the deeper mysteries in life that Donnie has been pondering (i.e. the existence of God, and the space/time continum,) are valid and urges him to follow the signs when he 'wakes up'.
Throughout the movie Donnie remains in the limbo between his two minds, receiving valid information from both realities making them coincide. This duality is overwhelming for Donnie as you can see from the sessions with his psychiatrist(false god), who believes that Donnie is simply schizo and has convinced Donnie himself that he is schizo. This label that has been put on Donnie actually contributes to his confusion, anger and unhappiness. If he is what we call schizophrenic then is this connection he has with Frank (God) false therefore, there is no God? Or, if it is real then could everyone else be 'crazy' and he has to accept his role and protect them from themselves?
Donnie chooses to believe the latter, after his shrink tells him that she's been prescribing him a placebo (her facing the fact that she herself is not God and therefore cannot tell him if his experiences are real or not)And neither can we.
What ties it all together is the end, when all the main characters experience this alternate reality themselves as their dreams. Everything that happened, the flood, the fire the shootings all took place in a collective 'dream' and when shaking those characters to their core, making them question the path their live are taking for example at the end when Frank (the boy) 'dreams' that he gets shot because of the Halloween costume he has designed for himself, and how Patrick's character wakes up in tears probably happy that it was all a 'dream' and he has time to stop molesting little kids etc etc...Finally I believe the jet engine is also symbolic and Donnie really shoots himself in the head.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2010-04-25 14:46:08     Rating:

I think that Donnie Darko has taken a similar interpretation of the film "Jakobs Ladder...

Donnie dies at the start of the film by the air plane jet that falls on him in his sleep,the air plane component representing a "Engine for Life".

The rest of the film is Donnie trying to come to terms with dying, the rabbit is used as a symbol for "Death" and that a constant reminder that you can never escape him so live your dreams as you intend before he (the rabbit) comes for you.

The time travel and stuff is there to show Donnie trying to create his own world to prove to himself that he is alive, although at the end he realises that the world he created is horrible (his girlfriend dies) and that he would rather be with her... thus coming to terms that he must die.

Submitted by: anonymous
Added: 2010-06-27 01:05:40     Rating:

You, are all overlooking it. Look at it like this. Would you be happy if you died tomorrow ? Rewind. Remove all the pessimism and frustrations and just SMILE.

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