DONNIE DARKO (2001) *** It never posits itself as a normal movie, but it's all relatively linear and clarified until the denouement, at which point the wheels come off, the wheels were never on, the wheels were off the entire time but come on, there's no such thing as wheels and everything is both a wheel and wheels in their many forms. Yes, I admit that I turned to my wife and said, "Um...do you have any idea what just happened?" Which necessarily leads to reflection, but reflection that is not as conclusive as that aroused by The Usual Suspects , the kind of reflection we have here is more along the lines of "well it could have been this and it could have been that, maybe this, but no because, but then again..." So it's a great ride for existentialists of a certain stripe, people who are frustrated because they can always solve the mystery, and people who just like to be stuck. It's well delivered too, Jake Gyllenhaal is properly all over the place in the lead, that teenager who makes the adults nervous because he's already covered all their psycho-spiritual turf in 17 years and appears to have figured out something else; and Maggie Gyllenhaal is my kind of Dukakis supporter, and Mary McDonnell has that very knowing look, and Holmes Osborne is that kind of easygoing Republican that you wonder how he became one. Drew Barrymore's even better as the last great hope for America, thrown out by functionaries. They do a good job of finding some '80s music worth listening to, I'm not sure why but it does add a sense of strange temporality to the proceedings. A sense of doom, a sense of dusk, a sense that possibilities are latent if at all.
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