Donnie

So, we saw Donnie Darko last night...

Where do I begin?

Does it make sense? I'm not sure if it does, not to me at any rate. It seems daft to start at the end of the film, but seeing as the end is somehow the beginning, perhaps it's not.

There's a massive contradiction: It would appear that the aeroplane engine that falls on Donnie's house is from the future, to be precise, twenty eight days, six hours, forty two minutes and twelve seconds away. From what I can make of it, the plane his Mother and sister is on loses an engine. Something is wrong with space and time - the engine is transported to the past and falls on Donnie's house. Where's the contradiction? In order to put time and the universe right, there are a few things Donnie should do. It seems that he does them, yet still, the engine winds up in the past. It doesn't make sense to me and I just can't work it out. I have this major problem: If the aeroplane engine came from the future, it must exist twice in the present. Wouldn't the FAA know this? Don't these things have serial numbers or something? Why is nothing made of this? Or is something made of it and I've missed it?

Donnie obviously isn't mad at all. Frank tells him the amount of time he has left, and it's correct. That alone discounts Donnie's insanity. Or does it? Being given an absolute fact doesn't preclude anyone from insanity.

See how complex this film is? See how it addles my brain?

Did Donnie go back in time? Didn't he?

I don't know.

What was the point of the wormhole? Did he create it?

Was Frank in his imagination and a part of real life? Or only one or the other? Was his eye damaged because of Donnie's knife attack at the mirror or because that's where Donnie shot him? Were Donnie's visions of Frank him as some kind of spectre? A dead Frank? I wish I knew!

Was Frank actually at the party? Did he write "Gone for beer..." (or whatever it was) on the fridge notice board? Or did Donnie imagine that? Or was he the only one who could see it?

And Roberta Sparrow...!?!? I wish Donnie had been privy to a proper meeting with her. I'd like to know what she had to say or what was actually in the book she'd written.

What is going on with Cherita?

On Donnie's death, in the montage sequence, why do we see The school teachers, Patrick Swayze, Kitty and Frank (touching his eye)? Are they remembering the future? Do they realize how their lives have been changed by Donnie's death? The motivational speaker's kiddy porn secret has been kept and he's been given another chance at life, a real chance to redeem himself, Drew Barrymore gets to keep her job, Frank gets to live... Help!

Who is the fat bloke in the red tracksuit who appears a few times?

I know it was JRR Tolkien who said something about the beauty of the phrase Cellar Door - but what does it mean to the Donnie Darko viewer and to the characters in the film?

I've found an online copy of The Philosophy Of Time Travel on the internet. I'm not sure if it helps me or not.

Now I'm thinking about artefacts from the past, namely carbon dated items, which may or may not be from the future, distant past or anywhere else for that matter.

This movie really is posing more questions than answers.

In a nutshell, I think this is what is going on: The future and the present have been confused by a wormhole opening up and the aeroplane engine appearing in the past. In the future, where the aeroplane has lost its engine, Frank is a dead person. In the confusion of time and space, Frank has been able to come to the past, just like the engine, and direct Donnie in such a way as to put the future right. Whether Donnie knows this at the outset or not, I don't know. One thing I would like to know is this: did Donnie think he had to die, to remain in bed and wait for the aeroplane engine to land on him? Or was he happy to go to bed, thinking the engine would now not go through the wormhole into the past and land on him!?!?

Please help me out here!

This was an amazing movie. I was going to sell it on ebay this week, but I've now changed my mind. I'll hang on to it and watch it many more times in the future (or in the past!?!?) I'm sure.