random mutterings from the space between my ears: film reviews, poetry, prose and other things.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Darko: A comparative Review, by Pilar Mogollon and the artist Neil Collins
Last night, Neil and I watched Donnie Darko. We had both ignored this film thinking it was a slash em up murder horror type of thing. And Neil is on this no horror movie thing. However, our housemate, Bryan Crow, suggested it, saying it was like some trippy weird psychological thriller but not horror.
We found this to be true. The movie seems to follow an odd non linear plot about a teen aged boy, expertly played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who is troubled by visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, emotional turmoil, prophetic & paranoid delusions, insomnia, narcolepsy along with a very keen perception and intellect. His family, including real life sister, Maggie, are not sure how to handle it and rely on the advice of his therapist who believes he may suffer schizophrenia but seems equally confused about his struggles. He is taking a lot of pills but they don't seem to change anything. The family dynamics were very believable and appropriate, especially between the father and mother acted by Holmes Osborne and Mary McDonnell. Donnie also has a younger sister played by Daveigh Chase, who we will discuss later. The plot was finely crafted. The supernatural occurrences made sense in the context of the film and reversals were believable. I was pleasantly surprised with Drew Barrymore, who played a teacher who seemed to be enthralled with Donnie's intellect. Her acting was more mature and intentional than ever before. Let it be said, that all the actors in this film were convincing, however, Jake Gyllenhaal was really the glue that held it all together. Neil and I agree that he did an amazing job.
Moving on to S. Darko, taking place 8 years later about Donnie's younger sister Samantha, again played by Daveigh Chase. Neil says, "I will start out by saying the most redeeming quality of the film, which is, the movie is like anti-matter. They go through systematically bastardizing all of the good scenes and ideas, basically everything that made sense in Donnie Darko, but they do it in reverse and they do them so pointlessly and out of any context to any new plot, that it forces you to appreciate Donnie Darko all the more, it is one of those backwards compliments. The new plot is really just the bare minimum of what you would need to get away with making a sequel, it's just a formality. It is so contrived, it's just an excuse of a plot. This movie is doomed for two reasons first of all because if you hadn't seen the first movie, you'd have no clue of why anything happens the way it does and if you had seen the first movie then it's an insult to anything you could have possibly liked in the first movie. The only way that you would possibly like this movie is if you had been going through some terrible root canal during the first movie, or some other such trauma that is no longer there while watching S. Darko. Just to get the point across, I think it's a good time to mention, I kept having deja vu about the second season of Heroes, during the NBC writer's strike of 2007. You know, the infamous, visible blue screen flying scene, where Claire and West are soaring through the sky in an embrace and kissing to christian soft rock or something like that, as if they were Clark Kent and Lois Lane in that infamous flying scene. Which just makes you feel like, wow, they just didn't care. In short, you could compare Donnie Darko to a good artistic, well thought out movie like for instance 12 Monkey's, American Beauty, Fight Club, etc... and then somebody tried to do a so called sequel in an attempt to follow up on Donnie Darko and they made this S. Darko, which made me feel like I was watching Howard the Duck or something."
I would like to add that any surrealistic and supernatural sense that could be felt in S. Darko was achieved only by the cinematography of Marvin V. Rush, who brought a few very visually beautifully scenes to the film, which in some ways was deceiving because the first scene being so awe inspiring leads you to believe it will be a serious film. I suppose some of the musical score provided by Ed Harcourt also helped. Though this also was a hindrance, as it was often like they were trying to cue you towards a certain emotion by turning up the music during specific scenes, especially the half-assed attempts at love scenes, because the movie was not effective at bringing those emotions on naturally. In the first movie they did a great job at exploring the social inadequacies of adolescents in a way that seemed purposeful and intentional whereas the second movie wherever you did see that, it seemed out of lack of good directing for the actors to say their shitty dialogue anyhow. There also seemed an obvious but futile attempt by the writer and/or director to create sappy and overly sophisticated adolescent characters. Be it the director or the actors fault I can't help but think part of the problem is due to a major difference in the two films and that is that Donnie Darko had seasoned and gifted actors. Sadly, including, Daveigh Chase, herself, who delivered adeptly in her sparse amount of screen time in the first film but fell pretty flat as the title character of the second. This seems to be an effect Hollywood has been known to have on child actors, they are pure and gifted then hit adolescence and suck. [Note: Anna Paquin was brilliant in The Piano, comparatively she sucked as Rogue in Xmen. Natalie Portman
In closing we would both like to reiterate how the supernatural scenes in S. Darko were simply milked for some vain dramatic effect. They milked it until it was raw and then milked it some more. We also both wanna mention one more redeeming thing and that was the obvious eye candy decision of the costume director to have Chase and her friend running about in short shorts, pajamas, and skimpy sundresses throughout most of the movie. As for Donnie Darko, the only complaint would be that the movie did not use the very engaging and rewarding acting talent of actress of Mary McDonnell, who really shows her grit in films like Dances with Wolves and Grand Canyon. However, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, in just a few small scenes was very convincing as Jake's older sister, but maybe that's because well she is. Overall Donnie Darko was finely orchestrated. A perfect composition where each note built toward the next one. It flowed wonderfully and the supernatural occurrences were within the context of Donnie's mental problems and also were used in just the right amount to add the element of mystery to the rest of the fleshed out story and scenes. Back to Neil's points A & B: the supernatural was like the sauce that compliments and completes the spaghetti. Without the noodles could be boring but you definitely cannot parade the sauce around all by itself.
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