Poop Shute

Donnie Darko (director's cut)

Oh, Richard Kelly... what were you thinking.

There's a lesson to be learned here, kids. See, sometimes as an artist we can be our own worst enemy. Generally speaking artists are perfectionists, and rarely ever feel totally satisfied with their work. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in front of a canvas thinking to myself "okay, this is very very close to being done... just one little brushstroke there... and maybe one little stroke here..." If we don't reign ourselves in we can "almost-done" a piece of artwork to death. We can easily destroy something by trying to make it better.

Richard Kelly has done just that.

SPOILERS, Look out!!

In the original cut we get a look at a strange sort of pocket of time that never realy existed. We see twenty-eight days of the life of Donald Darko that end up never having happened. Sorry, for those of you who haven't seen it, but that's the best explanation I can give you in a couple sentences. In the old cut we are given no real concrete explanation, but we can piece it together to come up with our own. That seemed to be the appeal of the film for most people I know.

This time around Mr Kelly seemed to give his audience less credit. This time we are given passages from the book from within the movie (Philosophy Of Time Travel) at key points. And I mean they are printed across the screen and held there for long enough for you to read them. One recurring theme is the idea of Tangent Universes and Manipulated Dead. These two phrases are literally printed across the screen constantly. Okay, so I guess we're supposed to understand that Donnie is living a Tangent Universe, and he is The Manipulated Dead because he actually is supposed to die. Okay, that idea is kind of what I had figured out for myself, I just didn't have the convenient labels for it. One particular moment that SCREAMS of spoon-feeding is near the end.

You may recall in the original cut that after Donnie dies in his bed we see all the people he affected in his lost twenty-eight days waking up in their beds startled. It's as if they were all haunted by this chunk of time that never existed. It's like they were all dreaming it in unison and all woke up disturbed by their dream. This happens all without explanation. It just is. And it is good.

In the new cut Kelly feeds us a screen that reads something somwhat like this first:

Those that experience the Tangent Universe will wake as if from a dream. Most will not remember the time spent in the Tangent Universe, but some will and they will be haunted by it.

We read this and then are shown all the folks waking up. Why? Why do that? Why spoil such a pure moment with a billboard telling us what is happening. If someone needed to be told, then this was not the movie for them.

Here's one last example: The scene where Donnie sees the big wormhole in the sky and passes back through it to his bed twenty-eight days ago is also highlighted by an elaborate flashing of images from the movie cut with random stock images and it all starts with a big flashing sign that reads "PURGE." With this it seems obvious to me that Kelly is showing us that time is purging the last twenty-eight days from The Big Memory Bank In The Sky. Jeeze, Richard, if you're going to hold my hand through the entire movie, could you at least buy me dinner first?

All in all this new cut is just a dumbed-down version of the original and did not need to be made. I give it a 2 out of 5 poops, and it only gets those two for its passing resemblance to the original.