Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Karen Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore)
Noni Ford describes how the cult classic’s outsider characters question the normalization and acceptance of their town’s insidious behavior.
Gretchen: “Donnie Darko. What the hell kind of name is that? It’s like some sort of superhero or something.”
Donnie: “What makes you think I’m not?”
Donnie never says the things we think he’ll say, and though he does understand the social hierarchy and pecking order of his bus stop along with high school life, he’s a clear outsider. When we find him at the scene that contains the dialogue above, he has just survived a freak near-death experience due to sleepwalking. Other characters marvel at his luck and while he does seem to be dazed when considering his present circumstances, he’s more attuned to the mysterious character of Frank, who has told him the end of the world will come in 28 days. Oh, and launching into a relationship with Gretchen, who becomes his girlfriend for the rest of the movie.
We don’t know that he’s going to be a hero in this story, and through most of the movie he doesn’t seem to at all be racing to prevent this pending calamity. Instead, he lives his life as normal with frequent interruptions from Frank, who causes him to wreak havoc around the town. He doesn’t stand up much for people around him, and he talks very minimally with his foul-mouthed friends, who he is tied to more in proximity than affection.
But Donnie is not an antihero either. Therein lies one of the more intriguing parts of this film, because despite not fitting into either box, he will ultimately save the world. Despite not having these typical characteristics of a lead in a disaster/catastrophe movie, we will find him compelling from this moment onward.
While he is just a teenager swept up into this story, Donnie is also most critically a strange kid in a very ordinary town. This doesn’t cause him to have apathy towards others, but makes him more critical of the normality surrounding him. While others fixate on him — his parents who are worried about his mental health, his teachers who see his questioning of lessons as insubordination, and the town which views him as an oddity — he is focused outward as opposed to inward. And although an outsider, he is not alone in his perspective.
Sparkle Motion, his little sister’s dance troupe, and Jim Cunningham, a motivational speaker who has lots of social influence, are both accepted as normal parts of living in Middlesex. Both are celebrated and are often seen as a sort of unifying force that ties characters together. Yet Donnie is the only one to really call out the binary, simplified “teachings” of Cunningham, and Karen Pomeroy, Donnie’s English teacher, seems somewhat uneasy when watching the performances of Sparkle Motion. Under her gaze, we’re able to consider more of the impact on placing so much importance and status on these pre-pubescent girls, who seem to be the stars of the school.
Sparkle Motion’s talent show performance
In the school, Donnie and Karen are the only two that are aware that the passivity with which everyone accepts these performances is something to step back and examine rather than join in on. It makes sense then that Roberta Sparrow, the last piece of the puzzle that Donnie is trying to solve, used to be a teacher at this school but has been relegated to living on the outskirts of Middlesex and is scarcely interacted with. While she has the same eye as they do, perhaps her age or her awareness have made her the most abstracted from these studied presentations of talent and insight. She doesn’t fit into these scenes and isn’t compelled to make a place for herself in them either.
Donnie, Karen, and Roberta are the only characters who stick out and don’t conform to the roles they’ve been given. Along with seeing essential truths others are unwilling to accept or are blind to, they also understand that there is something wrong with this place. While there are many theories about the structure of the film, one that has much supporting evidence is that everything that happens after Donnie survives his would-be death is a tangential reality. All the events we see transpire during the film occur with an underlying off-ness to them, like something shifted out of place, that only these three characters sense.
Of course, since they don’t have the support of the community or the ability to draw any real crowds to listen to them, they are not people anyone would reliably trust to raise any red flags. I find it interesting that while they are knowingly and unknowingly trying to prevent the end of the world, they are repeatedly being ousted out of zones of influence. Roberta has long ago left teaching, although we don’t know exactly how that precipitated; Karen is being pushed out of her role as a teacher due to her pushback against the administration; and Donnie is threatened with suspension due to his voicing suspicions regarding Cunningham’s philosophy. The school is the social nexus for many in this town and for these characters, and yet the school as an institution is trying to silence their input amongst the wider school body, almost as if the only way the people can move forward is by fully accepting the confines of modernity and forcing outlier opinions out to preserve the perception of normalcy.
Donnie with his teacher Mrs. Farmer
Yet they need people like Donnie, Karen, and Roberta to be able to live. And despite the derision they heap upon them, these characters want the world to survive. Reframing outcasts as those conscious of separate realities as opposed to absolute hatred of the people around them isn’t a very familiar outlook, especially because it makes the characters multi-faceted. Nihilistic sketches are easier to latch onto, but they aren’t that interesting. The screenwriter/director Richard Kelly saves these characters from that fate and gives audiences a more nuanced take on people you find out in the world. This differentiation changes the story so instead of the big question of the movie being whether outcasts should be listened to, it’s really about the scope of impact someone has on just one town.
When Donnie saves the universe, he allows all of these people to have the ability to keep living, to grow and change, to break their own cycles. But who will now question the goings-on at school, and who will be there for Gretchen Ross? It’s hard to say someone will fill that role, but Donnie Darko leaves that up to us and takes a chance on the ability for us to figure the rest out.
Donnie Darko will be screened at IU Cinema in a new 4K restoration on October 24 at 10pm as part of Friday Night Frights.