aMockTie
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No worries, I hope you’re in a (relatively, despite the state of the outside world) good space as well. I wish you all the best, and I hope to meet again. Cheers mate!
No worries mate, that’s thankfully in the past. I appreciate this brief discussion, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
That’s fair enough. I tend to look at things overly analytically, and I have a hard time when there isn’t a clear answer, or even potential answer to “why?”
If every answer is a paradox, and the conclusion happens because “that’s just how it happened,” I feel unsatisfied. I want it to mean something conclusive, even if that conclusive meaning is ambiguous.
I think a movie that accomplishes this concept more effectively is Inception. The ending is very ambiguous, but there are multiple concrete and logical interpretations. Those possibilities feel exciting to discuss and explore to me personally, while Donnie Darko just leaves me with more questions and confusion.
I understand that it has prompted a lot of debate and conversation, which was very likely the goal.
Spoiler
However, I don’t find any of that information or explanations compelling. The author of that article even admits multiple times that the understanding and interpretation is ambiguous. None of the “why” or the “how” is definitively explained.
Sensitive subject matter below:
I’m also almost certainly biased to view the message of the movie negatively in hindsight. I’m on the spectrum and struggled severely with my mental health for years, including when I watched this movie for the first time. The fact that the movie ends with his suicide being portrayed as a heroic and noble act had a profoundly negative impact on me for many years.
Strange movie with some interesting philosophy and good moments.
Spoiler
I never understand what Donnie did to break out of the time loop. It seemed like all of the events of the previous loops still occurred throughout the movie, so why was the final loop significant? What caused him to stay in his bed? Was his death necessary, and if so, why?
When my daughter was born, my wife and I would take turns caring for her through the night. She pumped breast milk so I had access to food as needed on my nights, and she could breastfeed directly on her nights.
It soon became clear that our daughter preferred direct breastfeeding to the bottle, but I was much better at calming her and getting her back to sleep. The result was that I ended up covering my wife’s nights more frequently because she was otherwise at home with the baby all day while I was at work and felt like she needed the break. I was also “used” to sleep deprivation from the past years when I was working full-time while also going to college full-time, and she would stay home and watch TV, read, or paint.
I was constantly exhausted for the first 6 months, until she was mostly able to sleep through most nights. I would regularly apologize to my coworkers for my reduced cognitive ability because I didn’t get any sleep the previous night or two, and my boss would express how he didn’t understand how I was still vertical. Thankfully they were all very understanding and accommodating, and I was at least still able to get most of my work done to our standard of quality, albeit much more slowly than usual.
I didn’t have time, opportunity, or energy to even consider the prospect of intimacy at that time, so I absolutely sympathize with new mothers with absentee partners that have normal levels of energy and libido.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fnWypQz6X2U