Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Donnie Darko - Someone want to tell me what the hell that was all about?

Xixox · 06-01-2003, 01:43 AM

Just rented the DVD, watched the show twice (once with commentary) and went through all the special features. Here's the general idea...

[SPOILER ALERT!]

The night the jet engine crashes into the Darko household is the beginning of an alternate universe. The jet engine is pulled through a wormhole in spacetime, landing 28 days in the past right in Donnie's room. Donnie is rescued by Frank, who leads him sleepwalking away from the house.

Frank tells Donnie that night that the world is going to end in 28 days, and he means it. Not just Donnie's life... all existance. When a parallel universe is created by an anomaly in spacetime - such as a big jet engine crashing into a house 28 days before the plane leaves the ground - the fabric of spacetime needs to correct itself within a few weeks, or the rend will fall in upon itself, creating a black hole.

They have excerpts from the book Philosophy of Time Travel on the DVD - they're really worth a look. There's discussion of tangent universes, artifacts transferred between them (like the jet engine), the receiver (Donnie) who is usually one gifted with 6th sense, and the manipulated (everyone else effected by the split between dimensions).

To fix this hole, people who are effected by the changes between the split realities are manipulated (without knowing it) to driving Donnie into repairing the rift. People who die in the split reality are able to make stronger impressions through the past - so we have Frank visiting Donnie in his dreamstates, and Gretchen falling in love with Don. Other people are manipulated as well - his English teacher works the connection to Gretchen in (and in deleted scenes she teaches about end-of-the-world scenarios through the novel Watership Down); his Physics teacher leads him to understanding time travel (and just happens to have a copy of the book Philosophy of Time Travel on him); and the ex-nun who wrote that book has remained alive long enough so she can make the last influence of events that pushes Donnie to his destiny. Every relationship that Donnie has is intertwined, and each has the purpose to push him towards having him patch the universe.

So 28 days after the jet engine falls from the sky, Donnie is up on the hillside. He causes the jet engine to fall from the sky, through the rift, back 28 days in the past. He goes home, up to bed... and he wakes up 28 days in the past (now that the tangent universes have returned to normality), thinking everything that just happened was all a vivid dream. Then the jet engine falls through the roof & kills him. Everyone else in town wakes up from the same vivid dream with just faint memories of what had transpired. The people you see at the end are those who were effected most: The teacher who now realizes that her hero the self-help guru is a perv, the self-help guru (who ends up killing himself later, heheee), the English teacher who still has her job & her hubby the Physics teacher, Frank, etc. There's even a hint of a connection between Gretchen & Donnie's mom, even though they've never really met.

I think I'll be watching this one several more times, and catching more bits every time.
As the song says, It's a mad world.

06-01-2003, 01:43 AM	#5 (permalink)
Xixox Crazy Location: MN-WI	Just rented the DVD, watched the show twice (once with commentary) and went through all the special features. Here's the general idea... [SPOILER ALERT!] The night the jet engine crashes into the Darko household is the beginning of an alternate universe. The jet engine is pulled through a wormhole in spacetime, landing 28 days in the past right in Donnie's room. Donnie is rescued by Frank, who leads him sleepwalking away from the house. Frank tells Donnie that night that the world is going to end in 28 days, and he means it. Not just Donnie's life... all existance. When a parallel universe is created by an anomaly in spacetime - such as a big jet engine crashing into a house 28 days before the plane leaves the ground - the fabric of spacetime needs to correct itself within a few weeks, or the rend will fall in upon itself, creating a black hole. They have excerpts from the book Philosophy of Time Travel on the DVD - they're really worth a look. There's discussion of tangent universes, artifacts transferred between them (like the jet engine), the receiver (Donnie) who is usually one gifted with 6th sense, and the manipulated (everyone else effected by the split between dimensions). To fix this hole, people who are effected by the changes between the split realities are manipulated (without knowing it) to driving Donnie into repairing the rift. People who die in the split reality are able to make stronger impressions through the past - so we have Frank visiting Donnie in his dreamstates, and Gretchen falling in love with Don. Other people are manipulated as well - his English teacher works the connection to Gretchen in (and in deleted scenes she teaches about end-of-the-world scenarios through the novel Watership Down); his Physics teacher leads him to understanding time travel (and just happens to have a copy of the book Philosophy of Time Travel on him); and the ex-nun who wrote that book has remained alive long enough so she can make the last influence of events that pushes Donnie to his destiny. Every relationship that Donnie has is intertwined, and each has the purpose to push him towards having him patch the universe. So 28 days after the jet engine falls from the sky, Donnie is up on the hillside. He causes the jet engine to fall from the sky, through the rift, back 28 days in the past. He goes home, up to bed... and he wakes up 28 days in the past (now that the tangent universes have returned to normality), thinking everything that just happened was all a vivid dream. Then the jet engine falls through the roof & kills him. Everyone else in town wakes up from the same vivid dream with just faint memories of what had transpired. The people you see at the end are those who were effected most: The teacher who now realizes that her hero the self-help guru is a perv, the self-help guru (who ends up killing himself later, heheee), the English teacher who still has her job & her hubby the Physics teacher, Frank, etc. There's even a hint of a connection between Gretchen & Donnie's mom, even though they've never really met. I think I'll be watching this one several more times, and catching more bits every time. As the song says, It's a mad world. __________________ Incompetence When you earnestly believe you can compensate for a lack of skill by doubling your efforts, there's no end to what you can't do.