How Don­nie Darko changed my life

In 2003 I was just 16 and, like any boy of that age, high­ly impres­sion­able. I had just start­ed art col­lege and was lis­ten­ing to new music, meet­ing lots of inter­est­ing peo­ple, and fail­ing mis­er­ably at skate­board­ing. At this stage, films were lit­tle more than light enter­tain­ment, often thrilling me in the moment but rarely hav­ing a last­ing impact. My film edu­ca­tion was bare­ly in its infan­cy and at that rate was unlike­ly to devel­op any further.

I first heard of Don­nie Darko in, of all places, the NME, who had fall­en in love with the film, even giv­ing away a poster in one issue. As some­one who only real­ly bought the mag­a­zine to read about The Strokes and The Lib­ertines, I was obliv­i­ous to the film they were pro­mot­ing but found its imagery mor­bid­ly intrigu­ing. Anoth­er unlike­ly source of expo­sure was The Big Break­fast. One of the film’s stars appeared on the show to pro­mote anoth­er film, but dur­ing a live phone-in an excit­ed caller asked them what Don­nie Darko was about. Dili­gent­ly, they attempt­ed to answer the ques­tion but were cut off by the caller who began rav­ing about time-loops and death. This added anoth­er lay­er to the mys­tery. What on earth was this film about and where could I see it?

As it turned out, one of my new­found col­lege friends owned a copy of Don­nie Darko on VHS and agreed to lend it to me. Final­ly I was going to watch this seem­ing­ly strange, already cap­ti­vat­ing movie, though I still had no idea what to expect or if I would even like it. I couldn’t have under­es­ti­mat­ed it more if I tried. From the open­ing shot of Don­nie (Jake Gyl­len­haal) asleep on a moun­tain road, as the sun ris­es and ​‘The Killing Moon’ by Echo and the Bun­ny­men hits, I was hooked. The sto­ry was even more fas­ci­nat­ing that I’d hoped, but it was the sub­tler ele­ments which I found to be espe­cial­ly beguiling.

Most of the char­ac­ters appeared to be rough­ly the same age as me and were going through the same sort of prob­lems that all teenagers expe­ri­ence. In com­par­i­son to oth­er sci-fi movies, they were not con­fi­dent heroes, sport­ing cool clothes and flashy hair­cuts. They were prob­lem­at­ic, some­times unlike­able but always human. You wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to emu­late them but they could prob­a­bly be your friends.

As a 16-year-old art stu­dent, the appeal of Don­nie Darko was instant and obvi­ous. The sound­track, laced with ​’80s indie hits, was a good start, as was the visu­al jux­ta­pos­ing of mid­dle class sub­ur­bia and macabre fan­ta­sy. Yet, for a boy grow­ing up dur­ing the era when emo went main­stream, lines like ​“I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look for­ward to,” res­onat­ed with me on an almost spir­i­tu­al level.

When the cred­its rolled an over­whelm­ing sense of melan­choly-tinged joy came over me. This was a sad and mys­te­ri­ous film about a young man who realised that he need­ed to die, yet every­thing which pro­ceeds that real­i­sa­tion had left me in a state of bemused aston­ish­ment. Was it right to feel like this? Were films sup­posed to pro­voke such a con­flict­ing range of emotions?

Upon first view­ing I didn’t ful­ly grasp the film’s cen­tral mes­sage or the ideas behind it. But it didn’t mat­ter because Don­nie Darko was now the best film I had ever seen and I was obsessed. The num­bers 28, 06, 42 and 12 were writ­ten on my bag and I even wore a sim­i­lar grey hoody to the one that Don­nie cloaks him­self in dur­ing the par­ty scene. The afore­men­tioned NME poster final­ly made it on to my wall and I even saw the for­get­table director’s cut when it was released the­atri­cal­ly in 2004.

In Decem­ber 2003, Gary Jew­els and Michael Andrews ver­sion of ​‘Mad World’, a cov­er song fea­tured towards the end of the film, became Christ­mas num­ber one in the UK. It seemed that every­one was catch­ing up with the genius of this film at the same time. For me, Don­nie Darko opened my eyes to the end­less poten­tial of cin­e­ma. If an odd lit­tle film with a giant talk­ing rab­bit called Frank could engen­der such enthu­si­asm, just imag­ine what else I could discover.

Watch­ing Don­nie Darko back recent­ly revealed a few flaws. The on-the-nose script, dat­ed effects and exag­ger­at­ed per­for­mances left me dis­ap­point­ed. How­ev­er, the raw emo­tion and sor­row of the film remained, serv­ing as a pow­er­ful reminder of why I first fell for it. Thir­teen years after my first view­ing, I still feel a warm sense of nos­tal­gia and mean­ing­ful attach­ment to Don­nie Darko, a film which tru­ly changed my life.