Donnie Darko clarified: Timeline; Ending
Donnie Darko is difficult to understand, and over two decades later viewers still find its convoluted chronology and ending perplexing. Examining the convoluted chronology of the movie reveals its underlying significance. Published in 2001, Donnie Darko connected with readers on several levels. Early vehicle for future star Jake Gyllenhaal and the directorial debut of visionary Richard Kelly was the movie. Its audience was permanently changed by its deft mix of teen drama, science fiction, small-town mystery, and fantasy.
Donnie Darko Ending Clarified
One can best grasp Donnie Darko's ending chronologically. The important events are broken out here:
After Frank orders Donnie to set fire to hypocritical motivational speaker Jim Cunningham's (played by the late Patrick Swayze), he does it. Cunningham's arrest results from child pornography found in his house.
Along with her dance troupe, Donnie's mother and younger sister head for Los Angeles.
Donnie's older sister, who is Harvard bound, celebrates her acceptance with a party.
Donnie searches for the reclusive author of a time travel book he acquired from a science teacher, but instead he is attacked by bullies.
Gretchen is struck by a car driven by Frank, the man sporting a rabbit mask.
A distraught Donnie wounds Frank under his rabbit mask earlier in the movie, the kind of damage Frank hid.
Frank's prophesy about Donnie comes true when she sees a catastrophic rip in the heavens.
Donnie travels back in time to the beginning of the movie as the plane carrying her sister and mother starts to crash returns to bed and lets the jet engine hit her.
Donnie's sacrifice stops Cunningham from being revealed, so changing the course of events that resulted in his mother and sister flying toward death.
Donnie Darko Time Travel: Clarified
Donnie Darko looks at theory of alternate worlds and self-reflexive time travel. Frank the rabbit alerts Donnie about a different, alternate reality (resembling 2022's Everything Everywhere All At Once but more singular), which first arises at the opening of the movie.
The movie purposefully leaves the reason the tangent universe exists a secret. Donnie's mission is to give his life in order to bring an object—the jet propeller engine—from the tangent universe back to its proper place. Text from Roberta Sparrow's The Philosophy Of Time Travel clarifies the character of this tangent universe.
"A Tangent Universe will be quite unstable and only last several weeks if one occurs. It will finally fall on itself, creating a black hole inside the Primary Universe able to wipe out all life."
Donnie goes back to the hillside in the Donnie Darko ending and sees the jet engine drawn into the time vortex. Time then turns backwards, allowing him to alter events armed with his awareness of the future. Though it costs his life, Donnie is the only person able to close the Tangent Universe before it collapses his reality.
Having accepted his fate to keep his family and Gretchen alive, Donnie freely goes to bed at the end of the movie even laughing as he does so. The descending plane wreckage finally breaks him.
Frank the Rabbit Clarified
Frank visits Donnie all through the film, but is the same Frank he records close to the end? This is a time travel paradox, thus one can understand the ending in several ways.
The film purposefully leaves Frank's beginnings vague, but upon closer inspection some hints show up.
Frank shows up following the creation of the tangent universe. Like the strategies used in Fight Club with Tyler Durden, the match cut shows his face superimposed over Donnie's during a sequence covering Donnie's mental health. This helps one to understand the bunny-man as Donnie's tangent universe alter-ego, meant to alert him about the sacrifice he has to make.
Frank not only saves his own life but also guides Donnie to change the path of events so preventing the deaths of Gretchen and Donnie's family.
Another reading is Frank is the same bunny-man Donnie shot, and his spirit is free from time once he passes death. Movie ghosts often warn the living of things to be avoided. Frank stands out in that he issues his warning before he passes away.
Referring to a particular kind of spirit known as the "Manipulated Dead," details from The Philosophy Of Time Travel help to support this theory Frank not only helps to save his own life but also guides Donnie to alter the course of events so preventing the deaths of Gretchen and Donnie's family.
How Donnie Darko Protests His Family
Though they let Donnie's family live, the film itself doesn't go into great detail on the hazy guidelines of time travel in Donnie Darko. Donnie closes the tangent universe and changes the future by returning in time and embracing his fate. Since Gretchen was with him, he stops her from dying; his mother and sister won't die either. Frank died in response to Gretchen's death; Donnie killed him, thus Frank won't die.
Donnie's sacrifice has less negative effects since he won't burn down Jim Cunningham's house, so avoiding the revelation of his collection of child pornography. Time travel in movies is always difficult, though, and the Donnie Darko ending suggests some echoes of the tangent universe still exist. Gretchen and Rose make eye contact and automatically wave as Gretchen rides past Donnie's house and pauses at the wreckage.
This implies that other town residents remain subconsciously aware of what could have happened even though Donnie was the only one who kept complete memory of the other timeline. Though he was an outcast in life, perhaps people will know that, even if they are unsure how, Donnie was a hero in death.
Why Can the Other Characters Sense Donnie's Death?
Although Roberta Sparrow's book The Philosophy of Time Travel clarifies many of the loose ends in Donnie Darko, the last chapter suggests, albeit it remains rather vague, why Rose, Gretchen Ross, Kitty Farmer, and Jim Cunningham experience déjà vu?
The dreams of the Manipulated Living are discussed in the last chapter together with how their path into the Tangent Universe haunts them. This helps to explain why every one of those characters in the "Mad World" scene feels so uncomfortable, which drives Jim Cunningham's suicide. Rose and Gretchen wave at each other as well since they have the closest relationships to Donnie.
Kelly described Frank's déjà vu upon dropping Elizabeth and honking the horn (via Cinema Blend). The director further clarified:
"I think part of the reason he is honking his horn there he is overcome by this feeling of déjà vu, where he realizes that, as all the other characters, they lived in some place, some other dimension for a brief time and its memories are, there but they’re sort of drifting away."
The director said that déjà vu is dreamlike since these "memories" fade rapidly even though they were once vividly remembered. Every character related to the Living Receiver remembers the Tangent Universe; since Donnie is the Living Receiver, the déjà vu the Manipulated Living underwent could be more strong the closer they are to Donnie.
Is Donnie schizophrenic?
Among the most basic and most often accepted theories explaining Donnie Darko is that she might have schizophrenia. Screenwriters frequently use this poorly known mental illness as a tool to give their films more mystery.
According to CBC, schizophrenia is frequently misrepresented in TV and film, and Donnie Darko was specifically called out in the report:
"Another common representation of schizophrenia makes the condition out to be supernatural or magical, like in...the film Donnie Darko...it diminishes the real-life experience of living with schizophrenia and suggests that it is beyond humanity or our understanding".
Many have pointed out that Donnie supposedly exhibits symptoms of the illness, though he is never officially diagnosed in the movie. According to the World Health Organization, symptoms of schizophrenia include persistent delusions and hallucinations, often the only two signs ever shown in film or TV. The problem with this theory is that Donnie Darko never explained that what Donnie saw, heard, or experienced was a delusion. The audience never sees the mirror cracked, and as far as the movie allows, everything really happened in the way that it is shown on screen.
What The Donnie Darko Ending Really Means
Donnie Darko's ending isn't the only one leaving viewers wondering what happened due to an alternate universe, but it has a reputation for being particularly confusing. While Donnie Darko's timeline is relatively straightforward, the meaning of Donnie Darko is a little ambiguous, leaving so much for the viewer to interpret. However, the real takeaway from Donnie Darko's ending is the statement it makes about determinism and how free will works within it.
There's much that Donnie can't control, but he makes sense of how to close the tangent universe. He knows he'll die, but as his recent existence has seen those close to him meet such unpleasant fates, he saves them by allowing the jet engine to kill him. Unpacking the science behind the film's story might be complicated, but Donnie Darko's ending is quite simple: he chooses to die so that others can live.
What Jake Gyllenhaal Thinks The Donnie Darko Ending Means
Donnie Darko is one of Jake Gyllenhaal's best movies partly because it prompts so much thought and conversation. In a retrospective interview about the movie, Gyllenhaal talked about the ambiguity of the Donnie Darko meaning and what he feels lends to its cult classic status. According to the actor himself, the fact that the ending is "vague," has helped the movie stand the test of time. However, he said this movie was about "adolescence and the confusion of all of it," and that makes it a "rite of passage" for many viewers that "messes with you a bit."
How The Donnie Darko Director Explains The Ending's Meaning
Director Richard Kelly also spoke about the meaning of Donnie Darko (via NME), and he admitted that most of the fan theories are all wrong. However, he was also coy in the interview about many of the questions concerning Donnie Darko's ending. He avoided the idea that Donnie was dead all along, saying that life and death can co-exist. He did say Donnie wasn't hallucinating and everything in the movie is real "to a certain extent." Finally, he said "life could be a dream" and Roberta Sparrow was onto something with Philosophy of Time Travel.
However, in an interview celebrating the movie's 20th anniversary, Kelly revealed a little more about the meaning of Donnie Darko, though still remained vague (via Rolling Stone). The filmmaker summed up the movie, explaining:
“I look at the events in the film as a story of divine and supernatural intervention, where a select group of characters happen to be living in the proximity of this science fiction event.”
There are plenty of fan theories about Donnie Darko out there, such as him being dead the whole time or the film being a cautionary tale about drinking and driving, but Kelly hints at Donnie being a Messiah-type figure.
Kelly also revealed that the majority of the movie can be construed in any way the audience wants and that it's far more open to interpretation than audiences first thought. The director revealed:
“That is not to take away any interpretation that people have of the film, which I think is valid because the way it’s engineered, you can have any interpretation you want of the first 90% of the movie.”
However, according to the director, the final 10% of the movie is what's definitively set in stone, putting an end to the idea that Donnie was dead the whole time. However, given that Kelly wants to make Donnie Darko 2, the title character might not have actually died in the Donnie Darko ending after all.
A Deleted Scene Makes The Ending More Harrowing
The ending of Donnie Darko is a bittersweet one, as the protagonist dies so that everyone else can live. However, there was a deleted scene related to the end of the movie that would have changed things and made it an even more heartbreaking end for Donnie. While nothing is really changed about the ending, there was originally a shot after the jet engine crashes through Donnie's room which shows Donnie still alive and slowly dying as he has been impaled with a piece of the wreckage (via YouTube).
The scene would have reinforced the sacrifice that Donnie made to save his loved ones. The image of the jet engine crashing into his bedroom spells his fate, but this ending shows that he truly had to suffer with the choice he made. While it would have been a more emotional and disturbing ending, it was wise of Richard Kelly not to include it. Donnie's death in the finished movie is poetic and dignified, showing that he did this willingly. The sight of him in pain and dying might open questions about if he made the right choice.
In the end, the more harrowing ending of Donnie Darko doesn't add enough to the final arc of the main character to make it worth subjecting audiences to such an unsettling moment.
