How do the technical
elements within Donnie Darko create a style and atmosphere that disorientates
the viewing experience?
“Sometimes
in our confusion, we see not the world as it is, but the world through eyes
blurred by the mind.”
-Anonymous
For my
investigation I have chosen to study Donnie
Darko (released 2001), by debut director Richard Kelly. The film follows a
dark and troubled teen, Donnie Darko as he is haunted by his sleep conditions,
causing him to sleepwalk and hallucinate visions of a man in a bunny suit,
(Frank) who informs him that the world will end very soon, and instructs Donnie
on how he can stop it. He accepts, even if it causes him to sacrifice
everything he owns – including his belief in life as we know it.
This idea is
also present in one of Kelly’s interviews. He states:
“I can
only hope that when the world comes to an end I'll be able to breath in a sigh
of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to”
To disorientate
is to obscure and warp the perspective of an entity, causing the subject (in
this case, the viewer) to become lost and confused. The Oxford Dictionary
defines disorientate as:
“Cause (someone) to lose
their sense of direction:
“When he emerged into the street, he was totally disorientated”
Make (someone) feel confused:
“Being near him made her feel weak and disorientated””
Within film, disorientation to the audience can be given in many
different ways. Some describe disorientation within film to be when screen
direction rules are broken or challenged. This can either make the director
look incredibly skilled within creating audience confusion and add to the
emotion of a scene well, or can be confused for lazy/bad filmmaking rather than
experimentation, if done incorrectly.
Elements from cinematography such as Dutch angles, long takes and tracking
shots which play on Depth of Field - to obscure and create imagery through
blocking. The lighting contrasts from the deepest blacks, to the bloom of
whites and light colours are also often found, to suggest surrealism. Music and
dialogue used atop this effectively convey emotion and atmosphere. Despite the
majority of film disorientation and ambiguity being subjective and an act of
expression from the director, there are pioneers who laid the foundation of
film inflicted-confusion. For example, filmmaker Alain Resnais once said:
“I hope that I always remain faithful to André Breton who refused to
suppose that imaginary life was not a part of real life"
Proving that, much like his favourite directors, he wanted to make the
surrealism of a scene stand out and easily be noted as such a scene, drawing as
vast of an distance between surrealism and reality as he could.
In this context, I will be discussing the confusion that Donnie Darko’s
visual and audio elements caused and how it does this.
The disorientation within Donnie Darko makes the viewer feel that they
have been abruptly introduced to a surreal world, very different from our own,
often causing them to lose the general direction of the plot. This can make the
viewing experience go either two ways. The film can either be found to be
brilliant and thought-provoking, causing the viewer to feel satisfied upon
understanding the film, past the disorientation. Alternatively, the film can
become frustrating as it causes the audience to think, or could not make sense
to anyone but the director, causing upset.
I believe that Donnie Darko effectively does the former and makes the
viewer think and question both the elements inside of the film and elements of
life outside of the film.
The disorientation of the viewer can be found in very many scenes
through uses of various techniques and stylistic features.
One of the ways that Donnie Darko disorientates the viewer is through
the opening scene. The film begins by showing our protagonist Donnie waking up
in the middle of a road on a mountain, completely alone. Atmospheric, mellow
piano music fills the viewers ears as Donnie smiles toward the camera. The
scene continues as Donnie proceeds to ride home in his pyjamas, devoid of dialogue,
which is replaced by the ominous music of Echo and The Bunny Men (an allusion
to the character of Frank). Each character shown, despite being a member of
family, is seen to have Donnie making no attempt to converse with any of them
until the following scene, potentially demonstrating Donnie’s isolation from
everyone within his family due to personality clashes.
This scene disorientates the viewer as they are left asking why Donnie
had awoken in such an odd place with no explanation given until a later scene.
This is shown by always framing Donnie in a longshot, showing how small he is
within the world, how alone he is within the scene and gives the full view of
body language. The director does this to create the atmosphere by questioning
the character of why the family had no dialogue to set up relationships within
the family and what the plot of the film is going to be. This contrasts from a
typical film opening, which would give a hyper-realistic vision of the
characters for exposition, usually a ‘nuclear family’ in suburbia (often done
through voiceover/dialogue). Instead, this film challenges the narrative construct
by making the not at all exploring the family backstory until the following
scene, and possibly presenting the idea that the family do experience some
problems, shown by parents’ lack of care as to Donnie’s sleepwalking. The
camera, throughout the scene, is active, panning to and from Donnie to other
characters within his neighbourhood. The motion itself is very physically
disorientating as the shift in perspective creates a difference in depth of
field, as well separating Donnie from the other people seen within the scene.
Another scene that disorientates the viewer is at 1:26:00 when the
countdown displays that only “Six hours remain” – referring back to the
character of Frank and his information of when the world will end. The scene
begins when Donnie separates from the crowd at the party.
Almost instantly,
we are disorientated from the viewing experience as the camera does a full 360°
rotation, with Donnie’s head being the centre point of the rotation, so focus
is kept on him. This rotation occurs around Donnie’s head (the central point of
the shot) potentially suggesting that he is facing some psychological
disorientation/conflict, supported by the performance of Jake Gyllenhaal, who
scrunches his face and uses the walls for balance as if his character was
experiencing some kind of dizziness and unease
Not only does this
place us with the psyche of Donnie, but it also throws the viewer off and
disorientates us to, as it’s not explained (until scenes after) why this had
happened. The act of rotating the camera around like this utilizes a dolly and completely
distracts the viewer from the other events in the scene, causing the continuity
to become skewed (just like the camera angle).
To make this shot
all the more confusing, once the camera reaches the 180° point, the frame rate
increases rapidly, making everyone else in the background move very quickly and
the camera continues rotating around Donnie until it reaches the full rotation.
This change in speed in the middle of the shot may have been used to hurry up
the shot; as to keep the viewer engaged and not bore them. However, I believe
that the change in speed was done as a stylistic choice and that the length of
the shot matters not to Kelly, as the Average Shot Length (ASL) of Donnie Darko
is 6.7 seconds, which compared to films like the Requiem for a Dream (ASL=2.7)
and The Avengers (ASL=2.8s), proves that Kelly doesn’t mind making the viewer
wait long for a shot to end. This is done to create mystery and suspense as the
longer a shot goes on for, the more it leads the viewer to believe that
something is going to happen. In this instance, it allows the unsettling
feeling of being disorientated to settle in.
The scene also
depicts the liquid-like spears that come from the chests of everyone, as a
pre-planned path, seen before within the film. This was explained to be the
‘soul energy’ of each of living entity on the path of ‘fate’. The reason that this
is depicted is to remind the viewer that Donnie can see this path sometimes,
and that it was ‘fate’ that certain events happen. For example, when Donnie’s
soul energy leads him to the fridge to see a sign that Frank had left, Donnie
immediately knows that he has to find Frank. This is obscure as the graphics
themselves are very ominous and look ghostly in appearance. For those who did
not see the explanation for these spears, this scene would’ve made no sense.
This scene then
takes it a step further as the introduction of other party goers’ spears are
introduced as the shot suddenly becomes obscured by these paths. As soon as the
first one enters, a flurry of bagpipes play along to the already chilling Joy
Division song. This could potentially relate to the confusion that Donnie is
experiencing as he can suddenly see these spirit energy beams, proven by the
POV shot of one heading straight toward him, triggering a very odd scene.
The scene shows
the spirit energy heading directly toward the camera, Donnie’s eye line. As
soon as it reaches Donnie, his eyes rapidly swell and shrink (alternatively), in
a very surreal manner. The space around Donnie’s head is filled with the
rippling effect of the beam and the spectrum of colours that it is reflecting.
This is a very
disorientating scene as the close-up is already a confrontational shot, when
accompanied by the editing; the shot becomes even more unnerving. This is due
to the surrealism of the scene, none of this would occur within our own lives,
so the lack of experience for us as the viewer, causes us to wonder what is
happening within this scene and even go as far as to question the sanity of the
character, linking back to his own referral as being “emotionally troubled”.
The editing
techniques used in this scene includes an effect known as “bulge” on both eyes,
which fluctuates between huge amounts of bulging and little to none, giving a
very disorientating effect as the characters eyes swell and shrink
simultaneously, making the face disproportionate and almost alien. It could be argued
that the budget constraints set by Kelly’s debut film made the editing all the
more disorientating within respects to the scene. I believe that with a larger
budget, the film would be a lot less confusing as the effects would be cleaner
and executed closer to those conventions of mainstream film. Despite having
little spent on it, the editing adds so much more to the scene as it adds it
makes everything a little more alien by breaking away from conventional editing
styles than it would do with the budget of a blockbuster film.
The scene
continues as Donnie is taken through a clouded tunnel, back to reality. All
seems normal, except for the audio which appears muffled and echoed as if
Donnie’s mind is only focused on one thing (preventing the end of the world),
in some state of mental tunnel vision. These effects applied to the audio make
it somewhat chilling, as if we’re on the other side of the glass to the
characters, separating our reality from theirs all the more. This separation is
a representation of the surrealism within the scene, heightened by the
performance of the actors/actresses and their panic.
Another disorientating scene in Donnie Darko involves one in which
a PTA meeting is held. A noticeable technique used is the constant crosscutting
between the on-going narrative events in the film, the blaming of the flooding
at the PTA meeting, and Donnie’s psychological conflict with Frank.
The immediate and
unmotivated crosscut from the PTA meeting to Donnie is disorientating, as
there’s no context as to why Donnie’s narrative side is shown during the scene,
we’re just thrown into it and left guessing until Frank the bunny explains the
situation through this narrative’s events. During this scene, director Richard
Kelly states within the Audio Commentary
that “molecules are being manipulated so that this vision, this ‘messenger’ can
appear to him, ‘they’ are warning him” – despite this being a very vague
description of Kelly’s vision for the scene, this also gives us various clues
that spin us deeper into confusion.
The talk of
particle manipulation leads us to think of some kind of superpower and/or
paranormal being taunting Donnie with its presence and disturbing the room and
creating a “water barrier” between itself and Donnie. And manipulating particles further by creating
a vision of a messenger (Frank) to appear to him and warn him of the danger.
This can allude to some religious symbolism of an Angel; often described to be
a ‘messenger’, came to Donnie in a vision (hence the water barrier to represent
the fact that Frank is intangible) to warn him of the danger ahead of time,
much like ‘Guardian Angels’ do. This can contrast entirely from the Science
Fiction genre this film is placed in, and subverts the rules of the genre (in
this instance) to disorientate the viewer.
When discussing
the topic of Disorientation in film, we can see many similar elements within
the same style of film, that due to other directors adopting these very elements
have become somewhat conventional within disorientating films. A pioneer within
film disorientation is Alain Resnais, who had worked 6 decades in the film
industry and is known for his surreal film style. The most disorientating of
these films is “Toute la mémoire du monde” (1956), which; translated, means:
“All the World’s Memory” – We can draw many similarities between the visual
style of Resnais’ film and Donnie Darko, for example, low level lighting (shown
in the screenshots below) are used to obscure and confuse the viewer as shapes can transform and appear differently under low light, leaving the brain to disorientate itself as it tries to make sense of the shapes with the limited light that enters the eye.
Resnais; despite separating himself from any movement, is said to be a key role in the 'French New Wave' era of filmmaking. Films produced within this movement are known for their "radical experiments with editing, visual style and narrative"[6] - which could also be said for Richard Kelly's style of filmmaking within Donnie Darko. The ideas of time travel and parallel universes, displayed with surreal editing of dream-like sequences and consistent deep, high contrasting chiaroscuro set upon closeups (example pictured below), complimented blue tones to set the mood, all could mean that Kelly was; consciously or not, inspired by and included the themes and trends that a French New Wave film had within them conventionally.
The use of technical elements to create a surrealist piece could be said to be a direct subversion of the Apparatus theory's rules. Apparatus theory is often described as the following:
"It maintains that
cinema is by nature ideological because its mechanics of representation are
ideological and because the films are created to represent reality"[7]
We can see that Donnie Darko is far from being a realist film and therefore breaks the rules of an Apparatus theory-built film, despite adopting the same method of using film to convey emotion (in Kelly's case, disorientation) onto the audience, created through use of camera and editing; the same way that realist Apparatus theory films are made, Kelly sets out to obscure and move his film further and further away from reality, making it a perfect example of Disorientation in film created through technical elements.
