donnie darko

On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 3:15 PM, Ariel wrote:

the director's cut of donnie darko is pretty shit and ruined the entire tone and pace of the film. it's overproduced and narrows the interpretive aspects that made the film good, it just falls flat. i cant believe they changed the music!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ7Fz3m485s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cugqRpgNJjA&feature=related

the only thing i find interesting about it is that it introduces the idea that the alternate universe is endlessly repeating itself on a loop until donnie fixes it. the director's cut supposes that the events in the film have happened many times before, over and over again, with donnie failing to close the loop each time. this is just the time that he succeeds. when the film starts you hear the rolls of thunder from the storm that happens with the wormhole at the end of the film, so the opening shot is actually supposed to be where the alt universe begins, it doesnt start when the engine falls in donnie's room. donnie is on the mountain laughing because he remembers for a few seconds. thinking about it that way kind of gives more purpose to some things, in a way, it gives a lot of the actions of the characters a concise meaning, but i sort of dont like that as well. and the idea that dead frank bunny's presence must 'prove' that frank had to of been killed in a previous time cycle before he go could back and guide donnie to his purpose is a bit lame. i thought the whole point was that the alt universe was so unstable that things no longer had to be linear. frank dies in that universe at some point, therefore has the power to be present in another form throughout it's entirety.

i really liked before how it had this 'hamlet' quality to it where things just feel 'off' or wrong to everyone, everything feels weird and out of place and everyone knows it intuitively but cant openly understand it.

everyone's actions are being manipulated by some other force, which i guess is also how the director's cut explains the events, but the director i am pretty sure wanted it to be the force of GOD and not human intuition. which is stupid. his view seems to be more like 'this movie is about how you cant escape the path of god' or some shit. it is kind of like LOST in that sense, the creator's idea of what they were doing turns out to be much less sophisticated, interesting, and intelligent than what the viewers thought it was. how lucky he didnt have enough money to put his full creative vision into this.

anyway you might like to watch it, it gives different insight, but the original is obviously much better.

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deb:
Oh wow. Thank you. I will.
Great commentary. I love the original. The negative capability of it, as you say. To lose that -- is a great loss.
Will watch it this week.
Loves, mum
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my donnie darko review:

every psyche, a portal..., September 25, 2003

This review is from: Donnie Darko (Widescreen Edition) (DVD)

...more haunting each time you watch it, Donnie Darko captures the fractal, paradoxical nature of human experience. It lives fully, with a growing awareness of an unconscious that pulls you in like an undertow, inverting reason into the greater consciousness of dream.

Think of Leibniz's Monads: every psyche, a portal--"an intelligent sphere whose center is everywhere, and circumference nowhere."

Think fractal:

Whether generated by computers or natural processes, all fractals are spun from what scientists call a "positive feedback loop." Something--data or matter--goes in one "end," undergoes a given, often very slight, modification and comes out the other. Fractals are produced when the output is fed back into the system as input again and again. (glyphs.com)

and:

FRACTALS depict calculations which exist on the borders of chaos, and INTERFEROGRAMS depict near-invisible disturbances of matter in time. The relationship is not accidental.

Do a search on INTERFEROMETRIC HOLOGRAMS and extrapolate. As Mad World says, ENLARGE YOUR WORLD.

Donnie's consciousness of the process, committing it to memory, binding it to Self (as CGJung used the term), seems most important.

It's a movie that acts as a symbol because its memory moves in your psyche constantly, a golden snitch that leads you on... like Frank...