Donnie Darko affectively contrasts mental illness with societal ills within a construct of a pseudo scientific theoretical take on time travel wormholes. Donnie is a untrustworthy narrator due to his schizophrenia who is included in nearly every scene. This should tip off the viewer that each occurrence he presents rests on his skewed viewpoint.
You may interpret the entire movie as a fever dream in the moment of his death. But that lacks support from the scenes that occur without Donnie's knowledge or participation.
The better interpretation is that Donnie is actually struck by a fall from his bike that opens his mind to the coming wormhole that allows a jet engine torn from a jet to fall to the Earth 28 days earlier striking his bed. He sleepwalks away from his death and visualizes the exact moment that wormhole will occur as a conversation with a costumed character, the Rabbit, has yet to meet.
The Rabbit empowers Donnie to question social expectations but also directs his actions which uncover social ills and crimes. He allows himself to confront indoctrination into ignorance and hate that is being disguised as spiritual and theological education.
Ultimately, Donnie attempts to meet the terminal event that he thinks is an apocalyptic end but is actually only his own end. It is then, with the accidental death of his friend and Donnie's retributive murder of the negligent person, who is revealed as the person inside the Rabbit suit, that Donnie realizes that he must return to the roadway where he first opened his mind when he fell off his bike. He then resets the time back to the wormhole event but without his forewarned sleep walk. He dies in the engine drop.
His death allows all the events he put in motion in his attempts to unravel the confusion he was experiencing from his schizophrenia and foreshadowing to never occur. Thus saving the lives of his friend and his mother but allowing the sins of other actors to continue (without Donnie uncovering of the preacher's child sexual abuses his mother won't be on the plane and Donnie's death may also keep his sister home, too).
This is the final message of the film that our understanding of society and our attempts to better it will always have unintended consequences.
I loved this movie and would have rated it higher had a few of the minor characters been better written with better actors (Seth Rogen, Jerry Trainor and Patrick Swayze are so cliched and their performances are flat and lifeless). But Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Noah Wylie, Beth Grant, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Drew Barrymore and others are all tremendous.
You may interpret the entire movie as a fever dream in the moment of his death. But that lacks support from the scenes that occur without Donnie's knowledge or participation.
The better interpretation is that Donnie is actually struck by a fall from his bike that opens his mind to the coming wormhole that allows a jet engine torn from a jet to fall to the Earth 28 days earlier striking his bed. He sleepwalks away from his death and visualizes the exact moment that wormhole will occur as a conversation with a costumed character, the Rabbit, has yet to meet.
The Rabbit empowers Donnie to question social expectations but also directs his actions which uncover social ills and crimes. He allows himself to confront indoctrination into ignorance and hate that is being disguised as spiritual and theological education.
Ultimately, Donnie attempts to meet the terminal event that he thinks is an apocalyptic end but is actually only his own end. It is then, with the accidental death of his friend and Donnie's retributive murder of the negligent person, who is revealed as the person inside the Rabbit suit, that Donnie realizes that he must return to the roadway where he first opened his mind when he fell off his bike. He then resets the time back to the wormhole event but without his forewarned sleep walk. He dies in the engine drop.
His death allows all the events he put in motion in his attempts to unravel the confusion he was experiencing from his schizophrenia and foreshadowing to never occur. Thus saving the lives of his friend and his mother but allowing the sins of other actors to continue (without Donnie uncovering of the preacher's child sexual abuses his mother won't be on the plane and Donnie's death may also keep his sister home, too).
This is the final message of the film that our understanding of society and our attempts to better it will always have unintended consequences.
I loved this movie and would have rated it higher had a few of the minor characters been better written with better actors (Seth Rogen, Jerry Trainor and Patrick Swayze are so cliched and their performances are flat and lifeless). But Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Noah Wylie, Beth Grant, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Drew Barrymore and others are all tremendous.