..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut
Directed by Richard Kelly

A fantasy for adolescent assassins, Donnie Darko was a boxoffice flop when it came out in 2001, and it owes its subsequent cult success and profitability entirely to the word of mouth generated by the original 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment DVD. At a basic level, fans of the film responded to the story's enigmas directly, but it cannot be discounted that the substantial supplementary features on the DVD, including two commentary tracks, went a long way towards backing up the film's legitimacy to its ever-increasing population of followers. Friends insist that other friends watch the film with them, and even though they don't sit around and delve into the backstory or the explanations of what happened, someone along the line does explore the supplements and pitches in an opinion of what is going on, and that word travels down the pike. The original 113-minute film ended up generating such enthusiasm that the producers came back to director Richard Kelly and asked him for more, and so now Fox has issued a two-platter Donnie Darko The Director's Cut (2226503, $27), running 133 minutes and providing an opportunity for fans to buy the movie all over again.

Kelly describes it as the "Extended Remix Version," intended not to replace the original but to complement it (indeed, the two versions can be looked upon as a physical metaphor for the two alternate worlds the hero is straddling). Where the first film's narrative is almost completely opaque-a parochial high school boy escapes death when a jet engine crashes through his room, but gradually realizes that he was suppose to have died, particularly when he starts having hallucinations of a man-shaped figure with a nasty-looking rabbit head (there are also problems in his family and at his school; and he meets a girl who has just transferred there) - Director's Cut at least tries to color in some of the blanks and offers a more elegant progression of story points. Although Director's Cut had a brief theatrical run, Kelly clearly designed it with the DVD in mind. There are pages from a book that appear on the screen, explaining the make-believe physics that govern the movie's world, but the pages rush by so fast that you can't possibly absorb them unless you have a remote control and Still function at your fingertips. Most (but not all) of the additional footage was included in the supplement on the earlier DVD, but having it reinserted (seamlessly) into the film (the music cues have also been altered, and some visual effects have been enhanced) makes the movie more understandable and emotionally involving. It does not, however, make it any better.

Donnie Darko The Director's Cut is still metaphysically obnoxious and an absolute example of what the movies are not supposed to be. It is deus ex machina, to use Kelly's favorite term, raised to the Gen-Y power. Everything that happens within it is utterly arbitrary and pointless,
and makes no sense whatsoever. The hero accomplishes nothing (there are hints that the other characters will remember their alternate world experiences, but the memories are clearly minimal and vague), and he does not even save the girl at the end, since she, like her mother, is destined to be killed on Halloween by her crazy stepfather if she doesn't follow Donnie that night and get run over by a car instead (one suggestion-the love the two share for the few weeks that they are together was a spiritual reward worth the sacrifice-oh, and according to Kelly, Donnie also saves the entire universe from implosion). The only reason the film has succeeded is because of its fine ear for youthful dialog, its affinity for the unique tone of teenage depression, its mastery of cinematic technique (exemplified in the haunting montage at the end), and its dense creativity embellishing its ultimately empty mysteries (it makes The Forgotten seem like a kindergarten play).

But Donnie Darko The Director's Cut is also magnificent, an absolute example of what DVDs are supposed to be. The supplements do not overlap the supplements on the earlier DVD (sorry, but if you like the movie, you'll want both releases), but they add substantially to the viewer's understanding of how the film was staged and what it all means. The commentaries on the first DVD, which included Kelly and many of the film's cast members, gave you all the basics about the movie's creation and its meanings. The commentary on the new release features Kelly again, prompted gloriously by Kevin Smith. Kelly willingly explains every symbol, every story point and every image in the film, even when Smith protests that he doesn't want to know that much detail. It doesn't really spoil anything, though, since the whole movie is arbitrary anyway. But along with guiding the viewer through Kelly's oddball universe, the two filmmakers also share many rewarding insights about making movies (they also do a lengthy and enlightening breakdown of Fargo during the course of the talk). At one point, they get off talking about how movies are budgeted, and Smith reveals that he simply prints up his scripts at 80% size, to lower his page count and estimated running time. This was Kelly's first film, and they have advice for others who are thinking about taking the plunge into the movie business. "When you're young, and when you're really overwhelmed, and particularly for me, you get out of film school and you have all this pressure, like, 'What am I going to be in my life?' 'What am I going to do?' 'Am I ever going to really amount to anything?' And I'm sure you went through this same thing when you maxed out a lot of credit cards on Clerks. It's like you're taking a leap of faith, and sometimes it's only when you're really young, do you take a leap of faith. If you don't do it then, if you wait ten years and all of a sudden you have a mortgage and you've got kids, it's not necessarily a wise thing to do. I think it also, it gives you a bravery, a sense of bravery. It makes you feel like you have balls all of a sudden."

No one expected the first DVD to be so successful, but Kelly was able to do an end run around Fox's initial pessimism towards the release, something other frustrated filmmakers ought to consider: "When I was putting the DVD together, I was like, 'Man, this movie has bombed, the packaging is going to be awful, I can at least put my deleted stuff on there.' If you go and you be nice to the [DVD] programmers, the people who actually program the stuff, you can sneak around all the marketing/packaging people. A lot of the programmers are really good people. That's how I pulled it off."

The presentation is in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is identical to the first release and looks reasonably good, with a mild softness here and there. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound has some good separation effects and a satisfying dimensionality. There are optional English and Spanish subtitles. Jake Gyllenhaal stars, with Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle and Katharine Ross.

The second platter contains 53 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, beginning with location scouting and moving all the way through the film's production, giving you a strong impression of the atmosphere on the set and how various sequences were staged. Along with the live sound, there is an alternate commentary track where cinematographer Steven Poster shares his reminiscences about the events depicted and also talks about the challenges the film presented for him. Additionally, there is a 28-minute look at the film's popularity in England (again, it was the American DVD that primed the pump for the successful British theatrical release) made up primarily of thoughtful interviews with various British fans; an 8-minute storyboard comparison segment; an outrageously geeky 13-minute home movie by fan who won a Donnie Darko Internet contest (it looks like the assassination thing is only a matter of time…); and a trailer for The Director's Cut.

February 2 , 2005

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