An Overview of the Macro Elements of Film Making Donnie Darko

Every film has at least one identifiable genre. The genre is the type of film you are watching, for example Frankenstein is of the horror genre, Star Wars is in the Sci-Fi genre etc. Some films have two or more genres, like Titanic, which is a love story and a dramatic tragedy, so it fits into these genres. Genre is used so that the audience can more easily identify what type of film a particular film is, and so helping them to decide if they are going to watch it at the cinema or rent it. For example, I may have seen a trailer of a sinking ship and thought it was an action/ adventure movie and then turned up at the cinema and seen some soppy love tragedy and been hugely disappointed, but the trailers made the genre easily identifiable and so I did not go and see it; I just had to suffer it several hundred times when my sister bought on VHS.

All films also have a narrative. Narrative is basically the story and the way it is shown to us the audience. Some films have a simple Linear Structure (where the story is shown in a logical order, from start to finish, like Lord of the Rings for example) whilst others have a more complicated Non- Linear Structure (where the story is shown in an illogical order, perhaps starting at the finish and ending at the start, an good example of this would be Memento). Narrative is hugely important because it is what we see. A director doesn't want his/her film to be too predictable because no one will watch it, so he/she may start you in the middle of the story to pose a question like "How did that happen?" to keep people watching.

I'm going to analyse a sequence from Richard Kelly's 2001 film Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko is a schizophrenic teenager who has an imaginary friend called Frank. Frank is a giant rabbit, who in his human form is Elizabeth (Donnie's sister)'s boyfriend. The film is a psychological thriller that features some science fiction themes. The film is now a cult classic, but it flopped on its release in the US as pieces of a plane falling into a building was not a popular subject just a month after September 11th...

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The sequence begins roughly 9 minutes into the film. It is midnight. It is stormy. Donnie is disturbed up by a disembodied voice telling him to wake up. The voice is chilling. Donnie, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, begins to sleep walk, and is led to a golf course by the voice. There he sees a giant rabbit, who tells him when the world is going to end (in 28 days: 6 hours: 42 minutes: 12 seconds). While he is talking to the rabbit, an engine from a jet plane crashes into his bedroom in his family's home. No one was hurt.

28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds later, Donnie is watching a plane fly over his house. One of the engines falls off the plane and plummets down into an open time portal (something created by Donnie's schizophrenia). We suddenly start seeing flashbacks of the film in reverse, and end up back at the beginning, the only difference being that Donnie is still in bed when the engine crashed into his house. He is killed instantly.

In terms of genre, the sequence I've selected appears to be in a psychological thriller/ horror genre. The mysterious giant rabbit with the chilling voice appears to save Donnie's life by coaxing him out of his house in time to avoid being crushed by a falling jet engine. The scenes are set in the middle of night to make it dark, a technique widely used in horror movies to create a scary atmosphere, because who knows what could be lurking in the shadows. The giant rabbit, called Frank, has a freakish mask-the ears are withered, there is no mouth- just a top row of teeth, and very large eyes - masks are often used in movies to hide someone's face to create a feeling of mystery. It unnerves the audience, because no one expects to see a 6 foot rabbit, especially one with such a bizarre mask. The audience are left wondering why there is a giant mask-wearing rabbit explaining when the world is going to end to this boy. Before this particular sequence we are told several times that he has a therapist who gets paid to hear his thoughts, so we know this kid has some kind of mental problem, so we automatically presume that this rabbit is a figure of his imagination.

The narrative of this sequence is pretty straight forward. The events play out in a logical order. In the film as a whole the narrative is moved on by picking out the important events and showing them as being on different days by using headings that read, for example "October 2nd, 28 days till the end of the world". Also in the director's cut, we see extracts from a fictional book that is featured prominently in the film in a similar way to the day and time headings. This extracts pick out quotes from the book, The Philosophy of Time Travel, which are hugely important to Donnie's beliefs. He believes that time travel may be possible because Frank has told him that it is and shows him jelly-like holographic "open time portals". Later in the film, one of these appears as the jet engine falls down onto Donnie's house and we go back in time to the beginning, and realise that the last "28 days" have all been in alternate universe, created by Donnie's schizophrenia, and he is in bed laughing at it. Afterwards the viewer sees some of the main characters alive in their respective bedrooms, perhaps recollecting varying memories from the future "Tangent Universe". For example, Frank is shown in his bedroom fearfully staring at what is shown to be his bunny mask. He then proceeds to move his fingers over his right eye, the same place where Donnie shot and killed him after he ran over Gretchen.

In terms of Vladimir Propp, a Russian theorist who decided that all stories have only 8 broad character types, Donnie is the hero, Gretchen is the princess (Donnie's girlfriend who he tried to save, but she gets killed by "human Frank), Rebecca "Grandma Death" Sparrow is the donor (she is the author of the book), Jim Cunningham (a successful motivational speaker who preaches that everything is either love or hate) is the false hero (he eventually winds up being arrested because he has a collection of child pornographic images), and Frank the giant rabbit is the helper (he helps him understand the portals and dispose of Cunningham) and the villain (he kills Gretchen and eventually causes the "end of the world"). He may also be described as the dispatcher because he saves Donnie's life and sets him a few tasks, like flooding the school.

In conclusion, everything that happens after Donnie is awoken by Frank occurs inside Donnie's schizophrenic mind, but we don't know this until the end of the film. This makes the film fit into the psychological thriller genre well because the whole story is imagined by the lead character. This means that the structure is non linear, because basically we start and finish in the same place and time. Also the themes in the story, time travel being one of them, play on the mind of the audience. We wonder if in fact this form of time travel is possible because it is portrayed in a very believable manner through the use of the book extracts.

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