***DONNIE DARKO SPOILER ALERT****
***BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA***

Leena,

Since I was able to figure out this movie, and appriciate it without reading "the rules" I guess I'm not going to ruin a good thing and read them now.

I like thinking that this movie is about a teenager with the abilility to move around in time. I can also live with the fact that Donnie chose to sacrifice himself for the people that he loved (to me...the whole "if you don't do this all of reality is going to colapse into a big black hole" I kind of a...um...weaker ending in my book. It's wrapped up to nicely. I prefer to think that Frank is one of Donnie's constructs. I realy like the idea that he set all those things in motion himself by working backwards in time. (Getting a girl friend, exposing a porn ring, yada yada yada). I like that, and I prefer to think that it's a story about one person deciding to sacrifice himself for those that he loves by creating a 4d paradox. (which is what I interpreted by his smile at the end of the film.)

On a side note...

Upon watching the film again, I noted something interesting concerning the "Frank and Donnie in the Bathroom" sceen. Donnie is chipping away at an invisable barrier that only he can see.

Take for example this quote from http://freespace.virgin.net/steve.preston/
an interesting site on hypothetical time travel for the layperson:

Quote:

One criticism that springs naturally to mind is why do we not observe such reverse time particles? To answer this, consider two objects, one on either side of the light barrier. We will start with them stationary, and pseudo-stationary, relative to each other. Now can we expect them to be attracted towards one another by the action of gravity, or do objects on opposite sides of the light barrier have a gravitational repulsion? Lets assume it's an attraction. We would therefore see the particles approach one another, but would an observer on the other side of the barrier see this? As his time runs backwards, he would see the objects move apart. Yet to him it is our time that is running backwards and so he would reason that objects on different sides of the light barrier must have a mutual repulsion. Similarly, if we begin by assuming that such objects repel we will find they attract for the observer on the other side of the light barrier.

We can reason the same way for all forces and, indeed, all interactions in general. Therefore there can be no interaction of any kind between objects on either side of the light barrier. If such objects do exist we have no way of observing them directly. There could be an entire Universe moving backwards in time and we would never know!


Now upon reading this, and watching the movie...could it be that Frank IS working backwards through time. That he is a being who has crossed the light berrier. And that Donnie is aware of this, can see this barrier, and the reverse-time beings set up by this.

Granted, we're talking about a movie here...not an actual event...but I think thats what makes this movie so great. You can go off on so many tangents with it.

I also cant thnk of a better way to end the film. If Donnie just kept goin on, or those tradegies didn't befall him, well we wouldnt be scratching our heads nearly as hard and wondering what the heck we all just saw.

Jason