Donnie Darko:
The Director's Cut

Angst is elbowed aside by science fiction as a director time-travels to follow his rabbit down a worm hole

	Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
	Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne, Drew Barrymore and Patrick Swayze
	Written and directed by Richard Kelly
	Newmarket Film Group
	Rated R

By Todd Gilchrist

onnie Darko (Gyllenhaal), like most teenagers, is deeply troubled, but his problems manifest themselves in ways his peers thankfully don't have to endure: Aside from the fact that he frequently has visions of a six-foot-tall bunny rabbit named Frank (James Duval), Donnie finds himself at the nexus of a hole in the spacetime continuum, and soon discovers that he may hold the key to unlocking its secrets.

After he is miraculously saved from certain death when an airplane engine lands in his suburban bedroom, Donnie begins to investigate the far-fetched but seemingly plausible prospect that mankind may be able to travel through time, and finds the lines between the real world and that of his imagination inextricably blurring. At school, Donnie's classmates don't understand him, and the young man acts out in increasing measure in his classes, which he deems ridiculous, contradictory and far too cleanly drawn to justify his own world of ambiguities.

With the help of a few unconventional teachers, however, Donnie soon discovers that his burgeoning theories about time travel may in fact hold water, and as the world around him continues to implode upon itself with one disappointment after another, he finds that embracing his far-fetched ideas may be the only way to save not only himself, but the rest of the world as well.

Less turns out to have been more

After racking up a measly $600,000 in grosses during its initial theatrical run, Donnie Darko seemed like the least likely candidate for a "director's cut" re-release, despite the film's widespread acclaim by critics and fans of writer-director Richard Kelly's inventive and unconventional material. After receiving said treatment, which adds more than 20 minutes of footage to the original version and fully articulates the director's vision of late-'80s time travel, I'm still not sure the film deserves the second chance it's currently being given.

The structure of the film has been significantly altered, specifically in terms of the film's thematic focus, which in the extended version concentrates on time travel rather than Donnie's personal travails. While the special effects are beefed up and improved considerably over the original's threadbare approach to visualizing Kelly's highfalutin sci-fi mumbo jumbo, the end result is a film that stresses science over fiction and fails to register as strongly on an emotional level as it does on an intellectual one.

While critics of the first version might finally find more adequate explanations for all of the concept ideas and storylines contained in the film, fans who identify with Donnie Darko as a quintessential "outsider story" may find themselves alienated from this updated cut. Despite the filmmakers' dedicated efforts to sculpt their raw materials into a fully formed cinematic vision, one can't help but wonder if devotees of the film will like it less since it obscures the emotional connections they maintained with the character and his insular world.

As a passing fan of the film, I was impressed by the thought and care that went into its construction during the first go-round—I haven't seen as ambitious an SF debut in decades—but I feel that Kelly undermines the film's mutable appeal (as a hallucination, a teenage fantasy OR a science-fiction epic) by defining its rules. If you're a fan of the first version, head out and support the second, but don't expect it to make Donnie Darko shine any more brightly. — Todd

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Also in this issue: Catwoman, Zatoichi and Justice League Unlimited

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Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut

Less turns out to have been more

Donnie Darko:
The Director's Cut

`Less turns out to have been more`