Things I Love More Than Oxygen: Case File #1: Donnie Darko

I first heard about a little Indie film oddity with a bizarre name on Jonothan Ross' Film '01. After seeing a thirty second or less preview of the film I was unexpectedly obsessed. Living in a small Shropshire town at the time my options for viewing foreign/indie films were almost non existent. I considered spending a shitload of money on a train ticket to Birmingham to see it and was crushed when I missed out during a Christmas shopping trip in Manchester.
Then it came to Ludlow, my hometown, any way. Go figure.

It didn't dissapoint either. Donnie Darko is the directoral and screenwriting debut of Richard Kelly and filmed for a measly $1 Million. It was helped by two things; smart writing and celebrity assistance, most prominently in Drew Barrymore's production company. It also launched the career of some bloke called Jake Gyllenhall. Whoever he is.

It is, to this day, my favourite film. I love it so much I had a tattoo referencing the film. Specifically the scene where Donnie has written Frank's countdown to armageddon on his arm in ink with demented penmanship. Except mine is in very permanent ink.

It is the story of the titular Donnie, a disturbed, mentally ill young man growing up in 1980s, small town America. He is on medication and sleepwalks often, waking up all over town. One night he sleepwalks to a golf course where he sees Frank, a seven foot tall man dressed in a creepy, demonic rabbit suit. Frank tells him the world is going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. When he gets home, he finds a Jet Plane engine has dropped through his bedroom ceiling, which would have killed him. Oh, and there's no other plane parts around, nor for that matter a missing plane.
Donnie enters therapy, while simultaneously acting out Frank's chaotic, anarchistic will on his small town and trying to unravel the mystery stretched out before him. Oh, and he will also fall in love, travel through time (possibly), challenge the moral authority of his world and save the universe (again, possibly).

Donnie Darko is a film literally overflowing with ideas, yet none of them feel overwrought or padded. It all fits together. It cobbles together ideas of philosophy, mental illness, mythology, religion, spirituality and science fiction into a cohesive whole. Its ending is very, very open, but in a way which will allow you to impart your own interpritation onto the film. Its all about what you take from the experience.

Its cast is pretty terrific, without a bum note among them. Gyllenhall (Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain) is great in the lead, at once likeable and charismatic, while creepy, disturbed and desperate in his descent. Mary McDonnell (Independence Day, Battlestar Galactica) plays his mother, a woman torn between standing up for her son and falling into line with the community around them. There are other characters worthy of note, such as Noah Wyle (ER) as Donnie's high school science teacher and Patrick Swayze (Ghost, Dirty Dancing) as an insidious motivational speaker.

If this review has thus far led you to believe Donnie Darko to be a dry and humourless in it's execution, then I apologise for misleading you. There is a great deal of humanity at the core of the film. From Donnie's psychiatrist sessions, to his final speech with his mother, to the closing montage of people at rest, overlapped with the former Christmas number one Gary Jules - Madworld, there is alot of heart on show.
I also hadn't expected the film to be as funny as it was. It is interlaced with very funny moments; from the argument across the dinner table to the aftermath of Kitty Farmer's (Beth Grant) Love-Hate lesson, there are plenty of laughs amid the dramatic tension. Also, one word; Smurfs.
And all that that doesn't detract an inch from the tangible sense of dread and foreboding which runs through the film. A sense that time is truly running out, that a crescendo is fast approaching. And then that finale, which infuriated many, which left me excited, excited at all the possibilities. For what is the Universe, if not endless posibilities?

And lastly, a personal side bar; Donnie Darko changed the way I looked at storytelling. It helped me understand that linear, realist fiction isn't the only way to tell a story. I was shown a new world, where metaphysics, metaphor and surrealist elements can flow together in a profound way. I was shown that stories need to be more than just the telling of a tale, I was shown that it needs to say something. Donnie Darko speaks volumes.

To Create A World

I am a writer. An aspiring author. A potential scribe. I put this down to three fundemental things; the overactive and overdeveloped imagination of a lonely and isolated child, a keen, moderate and insightful intellect and a devoted mother who read all kinds of books to me from a very young age, from Enid Blyton to Tolkien.

From my earliest days of literacy I have written. At first there were new 'episodes' to my favourite childhood television programmes, Animals of Farthing Wood and Talespin. These were crude and amateur to the extreme, often comprising of two or three lines of dialogue and prose above and below a large, colourful picture. I was little more than a toddler at the time, but this was my first foray into the world of literature.

I got older and my work became more developed and complex. It was just as much about ripping off every cool movie and tv show I'd seen and been inspired by, but it was at least wrapped in the guise of something new and original. It was no longer an homage or extended universe from an already established work. Now it was all mine, at least in theory.
My characters were paper thin, without rhyme or reason to their behavoir and motivation. My dialogue was rifled with cliche and stilted, at once unrealistic and uninspired. My plots were unknowingly inspired by the mythic archetypes set forward by Joseph Campbell, although I had never heard of the man, nor Hero with a Thousand Faces. I was instead inspired by popular movies, by epic, swashbucklers, sci-fi, fantasy, adventure. My young mind was still forming into the adult I have thus become, and my early work is litered with, and sometimes wholesale stolen from the zietgeist of popular culture of my youth.

Slowly I became a true writer in that I allowed new ideas to form in my mind, rather than just telling the stories I had already experienced. Do not mistake this for an admision or brag of originality. My work is still inspired by the work of others and I'm sure the stories I will and wish to tell have been told before. My only hope is that I tell them in a fresh, interesting and profound way.

At the moment I have a project on the go. It is called The Ghosts of You and Me. It is the story of a man and a woman living in a modern city, living their normal, every day lives, their problems and triumphs for all to see. It is a love story, of sorts, with a metaphysical element. In my story, the internal, hidden fears and doubts that we all share are given an external, quasi-physical face and voice. The titular Ghosts berate and ridicule our heroes as they struggle against the everyday trials they suffer. And because the Ghosts seek to exploit their insecurities and strife, they see one another. He sees her and she sees him in their waking dreamscape.

Writing to me is sacred. It is spiritual. It is my life's blood. I will always be a writer. I may sometimes be lazy, sometimes suffer from writer's block, sometimes been uninspired and unmotivated, but it will always be a pure form of expression to me. It is a God like power. I am the sole, universal creator of a living, breathing world, a reality that I shape and create, populated and real and unique. It is limitless and unending. It is Relentless.

Not that any of you give a shit...

...but here's a new post. I've decided, even though I have no readers, even though this is no more than an echo chamber for my various neuroses and traumas, it is a useful forum. Something theraputic, which I can accomplish in spite of writer's block and sleepy days. This blog is fun and an outlet, so I'll strive my best to keep it up.
And it won't just be random thoughts or general egomaniac rants about myself or the world either. It will have a variety of things including announcing an ongoing blog project, The Things I Love Files. These will be films, books, television, artists, music, places, people and anything that falls into the realm of 'stuff'.
#1 is a little film that I adore. Its called 'Donnie Darko' and I'll be reviewing it soon.
As well as that, there will be more chronicling of my day to day life. Not so much the ordinary, boring aspects to things, but rather, the adventures! Which I actually have a suprising amount of. ;)
Coming soon; The Tale of the Tunnel under Derby! :P
So yeah, plans. But first, a small side bar... On Writing.