The 25: Part 19: Donnie Darko

(The twenty five is an examination of the twenty five films that made me a cinephile. These aren’t necessarily what I consider the best movies, nor are they necessarily my favorite. Though in some cases they are both. Instead these are the films that made the biggest most indenialable impression on me. Films that if they hadn’t hit a certain way at a certain time I would not be the same film goer that I am today. They’re the twenty five.)




We bring a lot to the movies we watch. It’s no secret that personal experience affects how we watch a movie, it’d be odd if it didn’t. Does Broadcast News have more significance for me then someone else because I lived out the Albert Brooks leg of that particular love triangle? Does Dogma intrigue me more then most because I share Smith’s Catholic School education, fascination with the possibility of the divine, and engrained smart ass streak? Does The Royal Tenenbaums hit just so because I see so much of myself and my family reflected in it? The answer to each is Undoubtedly.

But every so often a kind of reverse osmosis happens and a movie insinuates itself into your life and being. I’m not talking about the dazed, narcotic, happiness that comes from the first viewing of a movie that you know will become a favorite or one that articulates something within yourself. I don’t know if I can even quite put it into words. All I know is that watching Donnie Darko is more like taking a bite out of one of Proust’s Madeline’s then watching a movie. I watch it not alone but with my sixteen year old self sitting on the couch next to me brought back vividly to life.

(My beloved Aero...)

Not to go into to much detail about why the film resonated with me so deeply, or what happened that night to make that resonation stick (There are parts of myself I like to keep private. Even in the age of blogging.) But the night I first saw Donnie Darko seems to be the last night of my childhood as well as the first of the long confused adolescence that followed. If this perhaps gives the film some unearned significance for me, then so be it. If you’ve been following this blog you know that for me the movies are an intensely personal experience. As I get older I find I have less and less use for "objective" film criticism, I doubt such a beast exists. Every critic who is worth anything is a prism as well as a reporter, and I always have felt that its part of my due diligence to express as fully as I can to the reader just what that prism contains.

The detractor’s of Donnie Darko, mostly those who caught it on its second wave of buzz, usually condemn the movie as an ungainly, awkward, overblown mess. To a certain extent I would agree, yet at the same time I’d argue that there are probably no three words that better describe adolescence, and any movie that deals with that subject, and is not a little ungainly with its sincerity, awkward with its ambitions, and overblown in its emotions is doing something seriously wrong.

I will concede that the film’s success did have a lot to do with its timing. Many have remarked about the reverse serendipity that had a film about a mysterious plane crash come out a mere month after 9/11. But it wasn’t so much the specifics of 9/11 that Darko seemed to so eerily and completely capture as the feeling of dislocation it brought.

It happened to come out at a moment when a bunch of scared teenagers had just watched the world fall about around them and found in Donnie an able surrogate. True no giant Bunny Rabbits showed up on the golf course to tell us the world was about to end. But to a suburban kid who had been taught all his life to believe in American invincibility and watched that lie implode in on itself on September 11th, The Lone Bunny Of The Apocalypse would hardly be more of a deviation from the norm.

But in all honesty, it’s not the apocalyptic overtones, monologues about Smurf sex, “Grandma Death” narrative puzzles, Donnie’s scenes of “stick it to the man grandstanding”, Kelly’s striking Wunderkid imagery, or any of the other things that so deeply impressed me at sixteen, that really resonate with me now.

Oh don’t get me wrong those things are fine. But what strikes me now, is Kelly’s human eye, the one that has only shown up intermittently in his subsequent films (Don’t get me wrong, I have a certain affection for Southland Tales and more then a certain affection for The Box, having found it to be one of those happy movies that markedly improves with each viewing). It’s Donnie’s Mother’s reaction in the psychiatrist office, when told that her son is likely slipping into Schizophrenia, one of the most heartbreakingly realistic portrayals of how someone reacts to a loved one’s mental illness I’ve seen in a film and her later perfect response to Donnie’s question “How does it feel to have a crazy son?” It’s the halting sweetness in Gretchen’s and Donnie’s relationship, Donnie staring at the long ago picture of the smiling Roberta Sparrow, its all the little messy human moments.

Because that’s what makes Donnie Darko so special. What has allowed it to still resonate ten years on, now that the novelty of its strangeness has worn off and to keep its reputation intact despite the sayers of neigh. At it’s core beneath all the brainteasers, mythology and games, it remains a simple human story (The fact that Kelly’s next film was nothing but brainteasers, mythology and games sans human story goes a long way to explaining that film’s ultimately doesn't work) one of a young man trying to survive in a baffling, occasionally hostile universe, while maintaining some measure of happiness and grace. Now I don’t know about you, but that still pretty well describes my day to day life.

And that’s why though I always watch Donnie Darko with my sixteen year old self next to me on the couch, it never feels like a simple piece of nostalgia to be tucked safely away in the past. Like all the movies that become part of our life it provides a continuity between who I was and who I am, and where those two things overlap.

Button Button Whose Got The Button

As the number one Richard Kelly apologist since 2006. It's my duty to inform you that The Box. No wait. Comeback.

Believe it or not the box is not as bad as you've heard. It's not a perfect movie by any stretch of the imagination. But it's an intelligent adult piece of science fiction with some great scenes and a mesmerizing central performance by Langella. Nothing would make me happier then to see it get a huge on Video success. I would also like a pony.

Seriously for all its flaws The Box feels like the work of a growing filmmaker. One who has truly taken the time to learn from his mistakes and evolve. And given its performance it might be awhile until Kelly gets a chance to. Man when Darko first came out and everyone started calling him the new Gilliam I bet he had no idea how scarily prophetic it would end up being.

Anyway give The Box a chance and it just might surprise you.

EDIT: I wrote another take on The Box for my column. Rather then risk open revolt by posting it as its own entity I thought I'd add it onto this one.

The Box was Richard Kelly’s bid for mainstream acceptance. Proof after the catastrophe that was Southland Tales that Kelly could play nice for the mainstream and create a movie that everyone could like. It didn’t work out that well. Instead of a safe by the numbers studio project The Box is a trippy, Sartre reverencing, expectation juking, mind fuck, that doubles as a serious morality play.

Just the sort of thing most people are looking for while they munch popcorn. Far from proving The director of Donnie Darko a safe bet, The Box flopped in theaters, and did only marginally well with critics. Luckily for Kelly, The Box is showing every sign of generating the kind of cult audience that saved Kelly’s career after Darko underperformed. With the T-Shirt ready iconic performance by Frank Langella (AKA I’m not Robert Loggia) score by Arcade Fire, and heady mix of style, ideas, and lunacy, its hard to imagine it doing otherwise.

The Box as it’s box office figures proved, isn’t for everyone, but those who it does connect with are going to be feeling the rarified jolt of cinematic ambrosia. Like The Sparse Moody Score by Arcade Fire, The Box at first appears to be doing very little, but reveals itself to be a rich, rewarding experience with further study. It’s one of those rare films that proves itself to be deeper and richer every time I watch it.

It opens with an upper middle class family in 1970’s Virginia, who find themselves on the receiving end of a very odd offer, given to them by the horrifically scared Mr. Seward, played by Frank Langella, with a mesmerizing polite malignance that’s worth the price of admission alone. Press the button that he has given to them, and someone “Who They Don’t Know” will die and they will receive a million dollars “Tax Free” (And remember these are seventies dollars) don’t press the button and well, in that case they get a pat on the back for being such good sports about the whole thing. Inevitably they press the button, and find the tables turned on them by a turn of phrase too good to spoil. Then things really get weird.

The rest of The Box is as heady, bizarre, and exhilarating as any of Kelly’s other’s films as our couple has to face Satanic Santas, The horrors of the Public Library, and K-Billy’s super sounds of the seventies. Though those put off by the purposeful obtuseness of Darko and Southland Tales should give this one a shot. Though Kelly isn’t interested in making it easy for you, all the pieces to solve the puzzle ARE here, and if you pay attention you can figure it out. I hope The Box finds the audience it deserves on DVD. Films as audacious as this deserve to be valued. So do filmmakers. I hope Kelly doesn’t find himself in director’s jail for too long over this. For all his flaws as a filmmaker (and as anyone whose watched Domino and Southland Tales knows, he has many) I can’t help but find movie theaters a more interesting place when a Kelly film is playing there.

The Box

I didn’t know what to think walking into The Box. Despite the fact that I’m a pretty big Southland Tales apologist, I’d pretty much written off Richard Kelly. I mean I like Southland Tales but I pretty much like it the same way I like a Freakshow; nice every now and again but nothing I want to make a habit out of. I basically thought he might make interesting films, or more accurately he’d probably make interesting scenes in mediocre films. But did I ever expect him to connect with me the way he did with Donnie Darko? To deliver that gut punch of emotion and intellect again? No I did not. As Vern said with Southland Tales he went from being the director of Donnie Darko to the writer of Domino and I kind of expected him to just keep fucking around.

Well I might not have loved The Box, but I sure liked it a hell of a lot, and one thing's for sure Kelly isn’t fucking around anymore and I’m no longer writing him off. Maybe he’s not just the director of Donnie Darko again, maybe now he’s the director of the Donnie Darko Director Cut, that slightly more muddled, less sure footed re-edit. I don’t know if Kelly will ever regain that Golden boy status he had just after Darko. Nor do I believe that he necessarily should. Domino and Southland Tales are movies made by someone who literally believes he can do no wrong. The Box is the film of a man whose learnt his lesson. It’s as intriguing and adult as Southland Tales was Juvenile.

The premise of The Box is pretty killer. If you haven’t heard it, it’s as basic as it gets. The Lewis’s a cash strapped couple is given a box with a button on it by Frank Langella (AKA I’m not Robert Loggia). If they press the button, someone somewhere in the world will die, and they will receive a million dollars. If they don’t, they’ll get a hearty slap on the back for being such good sports about the whole thing.

After a minimum amount of hemming and hawing the couple eventually push the button. The way it’s played you can’t really blame them. It’s just the idea of someone dying, it’s so abstract, and the money well it’s so concrete, it’s right there. How can you not be tempted? Besides (and not to get too grad student here) but by participating in this society we basically do the same thing every day. What Diaz does with The Box isn't much more different then what we do every time we buy something we know was made in a sweatshop, or grab a steak from a factory farm, which most of us do every day for the sake of convenience. We ignore our moral obligation because we're so far removed from it. It's so easy just to not think about it. Anyway one head slappingly obvious and but so well delivered complication later and the Lewis’s are scrambling to find some way out of what is essentially a cosmic mousetrap.

The Box’s success really comes down to it’s performance’s, it’s not a big special effects film, in fact it’s down right intimate. Particularly impressive is Langella, an actor whom I will admit I’ve never given much thought to before, this will of course change. His Mr. Seward, smooth as silk and merciless as a garrot, with his hypnotic face, shot by Kelly with such wit. Kelly shoots Seward’s wound as negative space as often as he shows it full on, highlighting what isn’t there as much as what is. It’s right up there with Christopher Johnson as one of my favorite effects of the year.

James Marsden proves once again that he’s one of the best secret weapons in the movies today. And Cameron Diaz acquits herself admirably here. I’ve seen her used as a bit of whipping boy in some of the reviews I’ve read, and while her range may not be particularly wide, she really sells the bond she shares with her husband, which is frankly really all she needs to do. You can feel how much they depend on each other, and when that bond is put to the test you can really feel it.

Kelly really does well here, creating a genuine feel of dread and tension throughout the runtime. Reining in his worst tendencies while keeping his personality in full force. There’s a nice little in joke about Kelly’s supposed obtuseness, when Langella exasperatedly explains exactly what he’s doing to a beleaguered NSA official before asking “Do you need a clearer explanation?”. There’s also a sly Darko in joke (check the pictures in the manual Marsden’s character rifles through on his car trip with Langella’s last test subject).

What keeps The Box firmly in “good” territory, rather then great is the film’s somewhat muddled middle section. While the first and third acts are tightly wound, things get a little soft and confused in between. The fact is that we know that the Lewis’s can’t escape the bed they’ve made for themselves. And we know it to, and to be fair Kelly says as much, the fact that they go see the high school production of “No Exit” isn’t an accident. But the strictures of Hollywood filmmaking demand that they must be given a chance to escape, we follow the Lewis’s separately as they are given cryptic hints that they can save themselves that are never mentioned again, then try to accomplish things we are unsure of, to achieve objectives that are never clear.

These scenes are painfully perfunctory, particularly one in which Langella calls up and literally tells Diaz to “Make sure her husband isn’t playing detective.” This despite the fact that he never minds, neigh actively encourages such actions later on. These scenes are going to drive Kelly haters up the wall, filled as they are with cryptic clues, and seemingly meaningless revelations.

Still these scenes are not a total wash, Kelly has a pretty good concept up his sleeve to power most of these sequences. The basic idea is that once the button is pushed Mr. Seward gets to run his rats through the maze with the aid of his “employees” who can be literally anyone he cares to tap into his hive mind. The encounters with the employees aren’t even particularly malicious, but they tap into a kind of paranoia that’s hard to shake. Even in these weaker scenes there are some great moments, A scene where Mardsen is corralled through a library is particularly disturbing, though the films pay off is the closest the movie gets to Southland Tales style “What the fuck” obtuseness, in which Mardsen must choose between three pillars of water to walk into, two of which apparently lead to hell. (Truth in criticism: To be fair, it makes more sense then most of the stuff in Southland Tales, and even has an explanation of sorts, its just the way it's presented "Eternal Damnation?" really?)

Still things pick up for the gloriously odd (love Santa), nerve wracking, and even heartbreaking ending. To spoil it would be unfair. I will only say that no matter what can be said about Kelly or his various movies, he has never lacked the courage of his convictions and he takes the movie to it’s logical conclusions.

The Box is not perfect, but it’s powered by that same bracing mix of intelligence and daring that made Kelly so exciting to me in the first place. Against all odds he has firmly recaptured my attention.

Southland Tales: A Year After The Apocalypse

Southland Tales remains an intriguing conundrum. I don’t even know if you can say it has a proper cult so much as a few intrigued apologists. It’s certainly not a film that I would recommend or defend as good in any objective sense. As a piece of filmmaking it’s meandering, it’s story, script construction and editing are damn near dadist. And the whole thing has such a self satisfied air to it, as if it had already decided it was a classic before it was even half way shot make it pretty hard to like. And yet it’s a movie I’ve watched at least a half dozen times and one that I’m likely to keep rewatching despite the fact that I realize it’s not any good at all.

Why?

A word like unique gets tossed around a lot. Used for stuff that’s merely quirky. Southland Tales though is truly unique. It’s like a movie from another dimension, one with a style of film completely alien to our own. Not bad filmmaking but filmmaking that’s developed on a separate evolutionary track from ours. One where every shot is a few seconds too long, every scene has got a few too many beats, every transition is a bit too abrupt, every revelation a bit too hazy, where the CGI is so bad I can only hope it’s intentional, one where a dwarf singing Jane’s Addiction Lyrics is a suitable payoff for a scene, one where The Rock’s and Seann William Scott’s strangely sympathetic childlike performances are acceptable, and there is nothing odd about cutting to a random computerized model of the human muscle structure at random intervals during a conversation. It’s not exactly a place I’d like to live, but it’s fun to visit.

The film is hypnotic. Roger Ebert famously wrote that I Heart Huckabee’s seemed to be the first movie that could exist without an audience. Southland Tales might be the second (Tideland is probably the third).

Part of Southland Tale’s problem was Richard Kelly, in the run up to the films Cannes release he kept name dropping the likes of Dr. Strangelove and Brazil. Now those are pretty big shoes to fill no matter who you are. If you happen to be a wunderkid director whose looking fixed for a comeuppance after writing freaking Domino and cutting an underwhelming “Definitive Version” of the beloved movie that sent you to stardom. It starts to look like you’re painting a bulls eye on your forehead even if you have a masterpiece in the can. Which, as we have established, was simply not the case.

It’s the wrong comparison to make anyway. Brazil and Strangelove are both intricately constructed satires. Southland Tales has the skuzzy charm of something that grew inside a beer can. It’s organic, bizarre, spontaneous not made. It’s closer to something like Repo Man, from which the film takes it’s biggest steal (and considering there are some pretty egregious lifts from Muholland Drive, and Donnie Darko itself; shots through the eye, time travel, the end of the world at a distinctive date, and the long ass tracking shot in the mega zeppelin that’s a total rip off from the high school shot in Donnie Darko; that’s saying a whole hell of a lot).

Because it’s impossible to deny that there are some chunks of the film that really work. The sequences involving Sara Michelle Gellar’s cultural Icon Porn Star (And maker of a really good tasting drink) and Wallace Shawn’s effete Anti Christ, not to mention the unforgettable fucking cars, hit the level of Social Satire done by the Looney Tunes that the rest of the film is so desperately aiming for. A lot of the film is visually striking (The perpetually clear streets of Hermosa and Venice shrouded in Fog are a remarkably creepy image)And The film’s twin musical sequences set to The Killer’s All These Things That I’ve Done and Rebecca Del Rio’s National Anthem, as well as the raids on The Neo Marxists and USIDENT, and the opening Nuclear Attacks on the good ole suburbia of 2005, verge on being, dare I say powerful.





That’s why despite the fact that it contains toxic amounts of Cheri Oteri and Jon Lovitz, despite the fact that I literally have no idea what’s happening in the final fifteen minutes of the film, despite the fact that I have no idea why Curtis Armstrong and Kevin Smith are present, and yes despite the fact that Justin Timberlake has a five minute monologue about speaking with angels. I’ve seen this movie six times and will probably see it six more. It’s not a movie it’s an artifact. One from a world of Nana Mae Frost threatens to criminalize teen horniness and the wave of mutilation rolls merrily through the southland. And it’s One I can’t help but keep examining.