High School, Revisted

Let's have a momentary reminiscence. Remember a long, long time ago, when you were just a baby hipster in a baby nation*? And you loved that one movie, the movie that everyone else was like, "weee-eeird," but you were all, "naw dog, this is tight in ways you can't even underSTAND"? And you spent maybe a month humming "Head Over Heels" to yourself whenever you walked into the halls of your high school, contemplating such deep thoughts as, "Every living thing on this earth dies alone?" Yeah, so do I. We took Donnie Darko SERIOUS.

I have recently become reacquainted with Richard Kelly's first film, happening upon a copy which I received, appropriately enough, for my sixteenth birthday (or something). Revisiting this artifact of my weird adolescent development was accompanied by a strange sentiment, some peculiar cross between wistfulness for Jordans past and dread of the same.

I needn't have feared. The movie has become something totally different than it once was. To watch Donnie Darko during the melodramatic, self-serious period of early- to middle- highschool is to project a similar sort of sincerity onto the movie. Lines like, "I guess some people are just born with tragedy in their blood" are met with tender sympathy, and speak to the tortured, misunderstood teenage soul.

It is a surprise-delight, then, that these lines become hilarious when seen through more adult eyes. If you are willing to entertain an alternative reading in which the film satirizes all characters as viciously, albeit less obviously, as it does Beth Grant's charmingly desperate suburban stage mom Kitty Farmer ("Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!"), you suddenly begin to find hilarity in nearly every scene in the movie. Case in point: do you remember the scene with Drew Barrymore's character Karen, just after she gets fired and is sitting in her empty classroom with Donnie, with the phrase "cellar door" written on the chalkboard behind her? As she gets up to leave, Donnie asks her the meaning of what she's written and, while removing with great care her reading glasses which are tethered around her neck, she replies in a sort of annoyed, non-ironic sincerity, "This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combiantions of words in all of history, that 'cellar door' is the most beautiful." As she casts one last, mournful look at Donnie, the two American flags jutting proudly out of the box in her arms bump against the door frame and she falters, stumbling gracelessly offscreen. The utter vapidity, the incredible absurdity of the claim she repeats is further ridiculed by the physical comedy. It is fucking hilarious. If you resist this joke, it's only because you don't know how to laugh at yourself. And if you think that they're really serious, take a look at this, dummy.

Further, it is impossible to resist this little exchange when Karen is getting fired:
-"I don't have time to get into a debate about this, Karen. I believe I have made myself clear."
-"You call this clarity? I don't think you have a clue what it's like to communicate with these kids. We are losing them to apathy, to this prescribed nonsense. They are slipping away."
-"I AM SORRY THAT YOU HAVE FAILED. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment. You can finish out the week."
-"FUUUUUUUUUCK!"

Nearly every character is given some such funny moment. Eddie Darko's comes when he's watching a Dukakis-Bush debate on the TV, slouched low in his chair, sloppily eating some snack, covered in crumbs. Bush says something dumb about the Iran-Contra Scandal, and Eddie mumbles cantankerously, "You tellem, George." I've already mentioned one of Gretchen's, and though it's a bit cynical, I'm inclined to laugh at Rose Darko's answer to Donnie's "How's it feel to have a wacko for a son": "Oh, Donnie. It feels wonderful," pfft! Wanna see the funny? The clip below contains some great moments. Skip in to 3:45, and try to tell me I'm wrong.



*"baby nation" intellectual property of Yasmina Bersbach