Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: Donny Darko ::
Comparing the original release to the director's cut
by William the Bloody
Brief plot summary: Donnie is a troubled young man. He has to see a shrink and take pills. He sleep walks and sometimes winds up miles away from his home. One night he follows a voice out of his house to a golf course. The voice belongs to a giant bunny rabbit, Frank. Frank tells him that in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds, the world will end. While talking to Frank, a jet engine of unknown origin falls from the sky and crashes down on the Darko residence, specifically crushing Donnie's room. This is when Donnie's life begins to get weird. Franks starts telling Donnie to do stuff, and Donnie, in his half conscious sleep-walking state, feels he must obey because it was Frank who got him out of the house and out of the path of the falling jet engine.
Okay, so that's the incredibly watered down version.
One of the things I really like about this film is its well thought out use of songs in the soundtrack. There are a few differences in the two versions I'd like to discuss. At the beginning, during the Donnie riding home on his bike after waking up in the middle of the road, the original release played "The Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen, however the Director's Cut has "Never Tear Us Apart" by INXS. "Killing Moon" I feel holds a stronger musical presence, with its bold guitars over the laid back synth-string section of "Tear Us Apart", however I must cede that "Tear Us Apart" is more lyrically appropriate, especially if you've seen the film before and you know where it's headed. Also, towards the end at Donnie's Halloween party, the Director's Cut moved "Killing Moon" to this scene where Donnie and Gretchen come down the stairs, post coitus, instead of the original release's "Under the Milky Way" by the Church. Again, "Killing Moon" may be more lyrically appropriate for this sequence, but "Milky Way" had a better sound, and did a better job at setting a mood.
The basic plot of both versions of the film remains the same. However, after Donnie receives the book, Philosophy and Time Travel, from his school teacher, the Director's Cut focuses more on the writings in the book, and even shows us brief, relevant passages from it held up on the screen. The Director's Cut seemed to really want to explain all the elements necessary for time travel, and parallel universes and how this was affecting not only Donnie, but the people around him. The Director's Cut presents to us that Donnie is in a parallel universe and THAT is why he is having visions and nightmares, whereas the original version almost gave off the idea that it was because he was crazy that he was able to see actual things that one else could see. Preceding many of the visions in the Director's Cut we get many more shots of eyeballs with dilating pupils, crushing noise effects, and odd voice overs.
And speaking about voice overs, we get a little more Frank in the Director's Cut by way of disembodied voice. To me, these were a definite bonus and added to the lovely weirdness of the film. More time is also spent on Watership Down, the book Donnie's teacher starts on to replace the works of Graham Greene, which she was reprimanded for teaching. This is of course significant for its use of bunny rabbits and one character's eerie visions of the future.
One could argue that all the new information from the Time Travel book excerpts make the concepts of the film a little easier to understand, but this is only the case if you've seen the original version a few times. If you've never seen it before, I would recommend the original release FIRST to get acquainted with some of the strange ideas, and THEN moving on to the Director's Cut. For some people, even if they have seen it before, they were still dumbfounded by it, and in this case, the Director's Cut may do more harm than good for you as it does give you some completely alien ideas that you have to accept as fact based on little blurbs that sometimes go by too fast for you to even read completely. These people may wind up scratching their heads even more with the Director's Cut than the original.
Donnie Darko, the original release: A
Donnie Darko, the Director's Cut: B+
