I suspect not just for me but for my whole generation (at least the relevant part of it), Donnie Darko has such an aura of the landmark to it that it's very difficult to think about - or watch - objectively. 2001 it came out - not sure whether I saw it at MIFF or afterwards, but either way I'd been keenly anticipating it and it didn't disappoint. Oh yeah, and the soundtrack - that version of "Mad World", of course, and "Under the Milky Way", "Love will Tear Us Apart", "The Killing Moon" (all three iconic for me in their own right, but that last now particularly inseparable from this film).
Revisiting it the other night, all these years on, what's most striking is the strength of the film's vision and the vividness of its imagery and iconography, particularly when Frank is on screen. And also the way it achieves its effect through a combination of the direct and oblique, the literal and the poetic, in a way that one suspects Richard Kelly himself wasn't fully in control of; relatedly, the underdeveloped - and, for me, pleasingly cryptic even if not classically coherent - nature of some of its elements (many of which were fleshed out more in the significantly more explain-y director's cut). It's still pretty great.
Revisiting it the other night, all these years on, what's most striking is the strength of the film's vision and the vividness of its imagery and iconography, particularly when Frank is on screen. And also the way it achieves its effect through a combination of the direct and oblique, the literal and the poetic, in a way that one suspects Richard Kelly himself wasn't fully in control of; relatedly, the underdeveloped - and, for me, pleasingly cryptic even if not classically coherent - nature of some of its elements (many of which were fleshed out more in the significantly more explain-y director's cut). It's still pretty great.
