Donnie Darko - A Singular Explanation II

Technorati Tag(s): Movie, Science Fiction, Space-Time, Opinion

Part one here.

After visiting the movie's homepage, which takes approximately an hour to solve through, and referring Cellar Door, not to mention half a dozen website reviews and explanations as well as a few dozen blog entries, it seems everyone buys the concept of a tangent universe (apart from the usual allusions where superhero stories are concerned--Donnie is Jesus, yada yada yada). They use that very term, tangent.

Referring Roberta Sparrow's book, which is available in its entirety (well, as much as available) both on the homepage, or if you can't be bothered to trudge through the puzzles, on Cellar Door, as well as inspecting Donnie's letter to her, most of my theory seems to hold true. Except that the terms used are Manipulated Dead, the Manipulated Living, the Artifact. Or some such.

In many ways, Donnie Darko is much less a science fiction story than it is the first issue of any new comic book character. See Spiderman, for the most part. We have the logical build up of a crisis, the logical build up of the hero who is guided by situations around him (Spidey loses his uncle; Donnie loses Gretchen) to accept his destiny and finally the resolution of the crisis/birth of a hero.

There is some ambiguity regarding what date exactly does the engine fall at the very end. Some say it's October 2nd. I still think it's 28 days later, and the engine follows its natural timeline progression.

But, and this baffles most any theory put forth, the conversation at the final stage of the puzzle at the homepage suggests that the engine which fell on the Darko roof belongs to a plane which still has its engine intact. And this piece of information is revealed in phone conversation which occurs in 1991, ie, three years later. That means, two engines of the exact same details exist. Which can only mean that the one which fell, fell from somewhere else.

Unlike many, though, I think that last piece of information was put forth to simply confuse most of the theorists. A kind of oddball. If anyone has any ideas on this, please do share.

No information about the sister--was she on the plane? No ideas. But, if you buy the above phone conversation, then perhaps that flight never took place. Where did the engine come from, then? Perhaps it came from the tangent universe. But somehow this line of thinking sounds like Spielberg cockadoodle.

There are some arguments against the superhero line of thinking, and I'm not saying they're just plain wrong, but, according to me, the one thing fuelling the superhero argument is simple: the movie's title.

Exhibits: Superman, Spiderman, Batman, Hulk, and even The Mask. And so on. All of them superhero movies. All of them named after the hero.

That's it, then. The experiment was more or less successful. I get to shout it from the rooftops: unlike Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which I didn't decipher very well till fellow board member on the House of Leaves forum, *o* explained it, I got most of Donnie Darko by myself, in a single sitting, without any references. Pin a medal on me.

One last note: cautious readers will notice that there are two point number fives in the previous entry. You get three guesses why.