rfdarko

My online handle as a teen and young adult was based on the movie Donnie Darko. When I saw it as a 12-year-old I hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental illness yet, but my brain said, “it me.” Despite the movie clicking with me so much, I hadn’t rewatched it till a few days ago. I think some part of me wanted to save it for the right time.

Now after living through 15 years+ with bipolar, I have a love-hate relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance as Donnie. For the most part it feels remarkably authentic and grounded, but the god damn joker smirk he does takes me out of it every time. It feels like an embarrassing caricature. To be fair I don’t have schizophrenia, and I’ve never had auditory or visual hallucinations. I’ve never actually been in true mania, just hypomania (ie, mania ~lite~). Even so, I’ve had milder but comparable experiences, and I’ve seen it in my mom and people in treatment. I think that generally, if you could be in the mind of a person experiencing a delusion, seeing and feeling what they are internally, their behavior would make sense. Donnie’s sudden maniacal affect does not, at least to me. 

As for the plot and the actual events in the movie…for me, the fact that it only kind of makes sense is part of what makes it compelling. It’s more true to what I think a direct experience with the metaphysical would be like, especially when coupled with schizophrenia. However, I recognize that in many cases “it’s not supposed to make sense” is a cop-out for messy writing. While just vibing with the frustrating but intriguing ambiguity is what I love, if that’s not a frequency that resonates with you the movie will likely leave you cold. It reminds me of the time I showed Totoro to a friend who hadn’t seen it as a kid. She couldn’t get into it because there was no real plot. Meandering through those slice-of-life vignettes, as nuanced and beautiful as they may have been, was not what she was looking for in a 90 minute film. 

A final point: as is common in early 2000s teen flicks, the portrayal of the fat character is rough. I should manage my expectations but damn it was hard to watch. Everyone but Donnie is annoyed any time she takes up space, physically or socially, despite her efforts to make herself as invisible as possible. Even Donnie tells another character “if you’re fat, get up off the couch and stop eating Twinkies”. It’s not unrealistic, it just feels especially bad because the mistreatment is portrayed neutrally. The message that comes across is, “It’s sad but what can you do? Some people need to work harder to be thin, but life’s not fair and if you choose not to, you’ll be treated with the disdain you deserve.”

In reality, many people still hold that opinion more than they let on. One of the most cutting experiences I had was seeing a tiktok of a woman which started as a close up on her face, and then zoomed out to show her in a cute if unassuming outfit.  Confusingly, the caption was something like “holy fuck they did me so dirty, this is horrific”. I went to the comments to try to understand and I all I saw was, “ugh that’s disgusting, I’m so sorry”, “what the fuck how could it do that to you???” Finally I found one person who was as bewildered as I was. “What’s the problem, I don’t get it?” The OP said, “I’m not that big.” I realized it was an AI filter that was extending the picture and creating her body, and it made her more fat than she really was. 

I think what hurt the most was – not to stereotype, but she and the others in the comments all looked like people who would happily hype up a fat person in a pretty sundress, even someone more overweight than she looked. Normal, kind, well-meaning people. In that moment, I felt like I could never take a compliment about my appearance seriously again. I still kind of feel that way. Someone reacting to an image of their face on a body thinner than mine like it was a horrifying disfigurement, like it made them a monster, and everyone being so genuinely sympathetic… I still don’t know how to compartmentalize that. I wish I could believe it was all hyperbolic and playful sarcasm, but it wasn’t. Sometimes I wonder if experiences like that are part of the reason I’m so prone to delusion and fantasy, like Donnie. It’s a necessary escape.