Richard Kelly makes teenage unhappiness feel serious enough to threaten the world. We value that conviction in Donnie Darko, while his fondness for ever more complicated explanations gives us reason to be cautious.
Fi1m perspective
James Duval’s Frank, the prophetic rabbit in Donnie Darko (2001), could easily make the surrounding troubles look ridiculous. Kelly keeps the boy’s vulnerability visible, so the creature never becomes an excuse to laugh at his fear. We were unnerved by Frank because his predictions made Donnie’s adolescent dread seem reasonable. Kelly asks us to take a miserable teenager seriously, and that gives the science fiction something to build on beyond the strangeness of a visitor in a rabbit suit.
His debut also establishes the appetite for complication that runs through the later work. He wrote Domino (2005) for director Tony Scott before returning to directing with the dystopian satire Southland Tales (2007). The Box (2009) adapted a Richard Matheson story into a film concerned with moral dilemmas. Those two later directorial efforts have been criticised for letting dense plots and metaphysical explanations overwhelm their stories. The difficulty is already present, though less damaging, in Donnie Darko.
Jake Gyllenhaal is crucial to why that film works. His Donnie remains recognisably young while the plot asks him to carry troubles on a cosmic scale, and Kelly has the sense to keep that vulnerability visible. The suburban teenage drama would matter without the time travel, which is why we recommend the film despite its difficulties. Its humour helps, too, though some of the adults become easier targets for satire than the care given to Donnie would lead us to expect.
Kelly’s writing is less reliable about what we need to understand. In Donnie Darko, it is sometimes hard to tell which questions need answers and which are there to unsettle us. Some of that uncertainty belongs to adolescence, but adding more questions does not necessarily make the existing ones more interesting. The film is weaker when working out its time travel starts to take precedence over caring about Donnie.
There is no need for Kelly to give up the strange ideas. We would rather see him make more room for the people trying to live with them. Start with Donnie Darko for Gyllenhaal, and do not expect every question to reward the time spent on it.
Biography
Richard Kelly is an American film director and screenwriter. He was born on 28 March 1975 in Newport News, Virginia, and grew up in Midlothian, Virginia. He studied at the USC School of Cinema-Television, graduating in 1997 after making the short films The Goodbye Place and Visceral Matter.
Kelly wrote and directed Donnie Darko (2001), his debut feature. He wrote the screenplay for Domino (2005) and wrote and directed Southland Tales (2006) and The Box (2009). Donnie Darko received 21 award nominations and won 11, and was placed second on Empire magazine's list of the 50 greatest independent films.
