I just watched the movie again with my wife for the first time since 2008, when I was in film and media class. She raised some good questions, and I realized my comprehension of the movie wasn't as good as I assumed. So, here are my questions. I'll try to keep them in somewhat chronological order, but the movie having all of the linearity of a ramen noodle will make this difficult.
- The first thing we see is Donnie up on the hill, on his bike. This shows us that he's having hallucinations that are causing him to sleepwalk. Is this because he's already being disturbed by visions, due to being a living receiver? Or his he legitimately a paranoid schizophrenic like his therapist says?
- At what point exactly does the tangent universe come into being? Do we start the movie there? I always assumed it was when he was taken from his bed to the golf course by Frank. When he wrote down the number on his arm, he's in the regular universe. When he passes out and wakes up on the golf course, he's in the tangent universe.
- Grandma Death - was she a previous living receiver? If so, does that mean you don't necessarily need to die to become one?
- Grandma Death Part 2 - Donnie suffers continual mental degradation throughout his time in the tangent universe, and is even seen laughing maniacally when he wakes up in the main universe. Could the reason for her mental degradation, and her nickname (which, as far as I know, is never explained), be that she is still seeing the manipulated dead and being influenced by them? Or are the manipulated dead specifically a phenomenon of the tangent universe that ceases to exist when that tangent collapses? This one vexes me because of my second question- whether or not he began seeing the manipulated dead before or after the tangent universe came into existing.
- Was the point of flooding the school specifically to cause it to be closed, so that Donnie would meet Gretchen? We see him conjure fire (IE, burning Jim Cunningham's house down without a lighter, and the unnatural quickness with which the fire spreads), so could he not have done something like that rather than breaking into the school, cutting the water main with a fireman's axe, burying it in the head of the school statue, and then writing "They made me do it" on the ground?
- On the topic of 5- During hypnosis with Dr. Thurman, he says he's not necessarily under Frank's complete control, but that he does what Frank says so that he will not be alone. Yet, throughout the film, the school scene is the only one where he goes the extra mile beyond what Frank tells him to do, both burying the axe in the head of the statue and leaving aforementioned message. Otherwise, he actually seems to be enslaved to Frank's will, either not fully remembering what he's done or acting like himself when he does it. Is it just inconsistency in the writing, or is there a better explanation, or is it just sanity slippage induced by being the living receiver, showing less remorse and more psychotic behaviors as time goes on?
- Deus Ex Machina is brought up by Ms. Pomeroy, but this is kind of lost on me. Nothing in this film seems to actually -be- Deus Ex Machina. Donnie is seemingly involved with every part of what happens, either directly causing it himself or being influenced by others to cause it. I don't even see him as being on a predetermined set path. He realizes what's happening and makes the choice to see it through. Determinism is a heavily debated theme of this movie but I'm just not seeing it.
- The ending confuses me. Donnie is seen sitting on the same mountain road he wakes up on at the beginning of the movie with Gretchen in his car as the plane his mother is on loses its engine and crashes. Does Donnie actively participate in sending the engine back to the past to close the loop, or is he just witnessing it from the other side? My personal head-canon is that he ripped the engine off of the plane in order to send it back to crush him, but others have stated it's more likely that the engine failed of its own volition and he simply sent it back as it was falling.
- The nature of time travel in this movie. At some points it appears to be a bootstrap paradox. Examples of this would be Frank specifically: The first time Donnie sees Frank, he's already dead, having been shot in the eye, which Donnie wouldn't do until the end of the film. Another would be the plane engine. The plane engine was ripped from another universe and sent to crash on his house, due to his mother and sister still being alive and the FAA not having any knowledge of any crashed planes. However, other aspects make it seem like a fixed loop- everything that Donnie is doing has already happened over and over again in the exact same way, and he's just going through the motions of what he's already done to get the result he already got (a la, Prisoner of Azkaban). The spanner in the works is the alternate dimension, which obfuscates exactly what happens assuming we don't know precisely when the tangent universe diverges from the current one. Is it impossible to know which is actually true? Or are we even seeing time travel at all? Alternate universes and time travel are not normally mutually exclusive.
- His therapist's sudden shifts back and forth personality wise. She seems to ignore the fact that he's seeing Frank during their last session, and simply tells Donnie "If the sky were to suddenly open up, there would be no rule. There would only be you and your memories" and "If this world were to end, there would only be you and him... and no one else". Immediately afterwards, she tells him to stop taking his meds as they're just placebos, water pills. This is a two parter:
Part 1: Obviously Dr. Thurman is a manipulated living. Donnie confides in her that he flooded the school and burnt down Swayze's roadhouse and he barely reacts, telling Donnie exactly what the consequences of him refusing to fulfill his duties as a living receiver would be, and then seemingly cuts him loose with little regard. A few hours later, during Donnie's Halloween party, she then calls and leaves his mother a message saying that there's a really important matter to discuss, and then another. Do you think there's a specific reason for the whiplash responses? I know that PoTT says that those close to the living receiver may be prone to irrational, aggressive or even violent behavior, but this seems extreme. Especially because the message was left a few hours later. Thoughts on this?
Part 2: She's the only person in the whole movie who actually seems to know something deeper about what's going on in the moment. She calls in Donnie's parents for a meeting, seemingly wanting to tell them something serious and grave, but ends up only saying that she wants to increase Donnie's medication and explore the topics deeper with him. This almost seemed like a rare moment of poor writing/pacing to me than anything else, and his mother's response of crying and having a minor breakdown seems to be pretty out-of-the-blue for the relatively innocuous news she receives. Again, there's no real definite question here, but thoughts on this?
A few smaller questions from my wife:
- Who is the girl Donnie kisses on the head who is passed out at the party before he takes the car? I assume it's his sister in a costume, but she looks like an entirely different person.
- Why would Jim Cunningham have any remorse for what he did? Upon waking, he's crying and seemingly totally breaking down, but he apparently is part of a large CP ring. When Frank tells Donnie to "pay attention, you might miss something" while watching Jim's movie, we see Cunningham give a young boy a slap on the bum as he walks past. So we've got someone who actively owns, buys, and possibly creates CP feeling sudden remorse for what he's done? I understand that feeling remorseful on waking up is part of the experience of being a Manipulated Living, but there's absolutely zero reason for him to feel any remorse for what he did, inside and outside of the tangent universe.
- Is Frank the only one who actually remembers what happened? He is seen drawing pictures of various Frank costumes, even touching the eye he was shot in at the Halloween party.
- What was the point of showing Charita at the end of the movie? She was relatively neutral and unemotional, and throwing the scene of her into there just seems unnecessary considering we didn't get any scenes from Donnie's friends, bullies, or any of the other characters who were more prominent than her.
- We never actually find out Gretchen's real name. Do you think there's any plot significance to this?
- We never find out what happened to Gretchen' mother, so it's impossible to say definitively, but do you think that it was an event orchestrated by Donnie or Frank to cause Gretchen to come running to Donnie? It seems pretty irresponsible of the police to receive a call that says "Hey I just got home and my mom is missing" and the operator says "okay, just leave". I get that there's a danger to Gretchen being at the house, but isn't it just ridiculously irresponsible of the police to not say something like "Go to a neighbor's house and wait for a police unit"? Instead she ends up going to a party, having weird sex with her boyfriend, taken to a creepy house, and then getting assaulted and run over?
Sorry, I know reading this and answering will be a herculean effort, but I would love to have a discussion abou...
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