I thought I was following this movie pretty well until I got to the last few minutes of it and everything I had been watching for the past hour was rewritten. One thing that surprised me in the scene of the second October 2, 1988 was the figure drawing the face of Frank the rabbit. I assumed the person drawing would be Donnie, because he was so troubled by him. When I saw that it was Frank the person, I thought that he and Donnie were probably similar on some level because they were both troubled teenagers. Why was Frank driving to Grandma Death’s house on October 30? He seemed to be misunderstood, like Donnie, so perhaps this was another reason why he was able to talk to Donnie and have such a powerful effect on him. The movie creates suspense about Frank’s identity as a real person when the viewer sees the message on the refrigerator on the night of the party, claming that Frank was there and went to get beer. The viewer is uncertain as to whether Donnie is now speaking for Frank and trying to acknowledge his presence, or if there is another Frank that other people can see. At this point the movie is leading up to the end of the world, so the partial unveiling of Frank creates additional suspense.<\/p>\n
Donnie’s death by the airplane engine falling on him seemed to be ironic to me because it showed that his life did change events around him. Donnie was the only student at his high school who could see through Jim Cunningham and was not afraid to speak about it. Donnie’s destruction of Cunnigham’s house led to the discovery of the kiddie porn and may have ended up saving children from a sexual predator. Donnie also was a positive influence on Gretchen—he was her safe place when her mom went missing, and when the other kids mentioned her abusive stepfather, she turned to Donnie to create a beautiful moment so that it would erase the pain she felt. On the other side, Donnie’s insistence on visiting Grandma Death did lead to Gretchen’s death and if events continued to progress the way they did, his mother and little sister would be harmed as well. The ending was almost like a more realistic (and bizarre) version of “It’s a Wonderful Life” where you see the impact one life has had on people except for Donnie Darko it was only the impact his life made over a few weeks. But was he more important and better remembered dead than alive? He seemed to think so, but I wonder how the rest of the month of October 1988 would be without him. Finally, one action that confused me at the end was Gretchen’s waving to Mrs. Darko. Why does she wave, normally a happy gesture of recognition, to a woman whose son has just been killed in a freak accident, a woman whom she does not even know? Does she sympathize with someone in that much pain? I wasn’t sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I thought I was following this movie pretty well until I got to the last few minutes of it and everything I had been watching for the past hour was rewritten. One thing that surprised me in the scene of the second October 2, 1988 was the figure drawing the face of Frank the rabbit. … Continue reading Connections and Some Confusion<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}