Blast from the Past Movie Review: Donnie Darko (2001)

Back when I was in high school I rented a movie called Donnie Darko from Hollywood Video in East Cobb back when there was such a thing. I can't remember why, but one of my Quiz Bowl friends was really into indie films and perhaps he recommended it. I remembered actually liking it, or not disliking it, but I haven't seen it since.

Well, then Myopia: Defend Your Childhood booted up the "Cool in College" month in which we watched movies that we (or our peers) thought were so profound back in college to see if they were still thus. I rented Donnie Darko from Videodrome, the last video store I'm aware of in Atlanta, and off we went. Here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

In 1988, troubled teenager Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) begins hallucinating a humanoid rabbit creature named Frank. This leads into a convoluted tale of time travel, young love, and mental illness.

The Good

*The performances are generally good. I particularly liked how they cast real-life siblings Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal as brother and sister. That makes how they relate to each other more authentic. Jake as Donnie conveys both mental illness (I think the film establishes that he's a paranoid schizophrenic) and a sweet side that his sickness obscures. And although the character Kitty Farmer is utterly obnoxious, Beth Grant does a good job with her intensity and moralistic fixation. Per her Wikipedia article she gets cast as religious nuts and rule-sticklers a lot, so that makes sense.

*The opening scenes of the film show rather than tell the Darko family's troubles. Mr. and Mrs. Darko have problems managing their mentally ill and possibly dangerous son, while their older daughter Elizabeth (Maggie Gyllenhaal) rebels against their traditionalism by voting Democratic.

*The film takes place in 1988, which I didn't remember from when I watched it. I liked how they got a lot of the details right--the TVs are square and wood-paneled and the gas can that a character uses to commit arson is the exact same color and pattern of the gas can I remember my dad filling up the lawnmower with back in the day.

*The ending is legitimately sad. That's one reason I didn't like the movie--it actually made me somewhat depressive for a bit--but it shows skill on the filmmakers' part. In particular there's a conversation or speech Donnie is involved in/makes that reminded me of the iconic quote from A Tale of Two Cities:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

*Two of Donnie's friends wish they had a "Smurfette" as part of their group. Although their main focus is sex--there are a lot of people who need to get their minds out of the gutter on the issue of there being one female Smurf and a bunch of male Smurfs--ironically that comes true at the end when Gretchen (Jena Malone), a new girl in school who becomes Donnie's girlfriend, accompanies Donnie and his crew on an adventure.

*Per the above, there's some good examples of foreshadowing here and there.

*There's some stuff that's legitimately funny.

The Bad

*The film is incredibly, incredibly BORING. Seriously, it was a chore to stay focused on the movie for large stretches of it, even though I needed to do in order to discuss the movie for the podcast. There's apparently a director's cut that's twenty minutes longer! Hopefully it's dramatically re-edited so it's not so boring and makes more sense.

(Based on what Lauren said on the podcast it sounds like that was the case. In that case, here it is.)

*I don't remember not understanding the plot when I saw it in high school, but I definitely had problems understanding it now. Maybe it was hard to pay attention enough to "get it" because it was so boring or maybe there's some other reason, but I didn't understand it and that's a problem. I'm not against movies that require me to think, but there's that and there's this confusing morass.

*Donnie befriends Gretchen by helping her get away from a couple slimy guys and walking her home, but along the way he acts really weird and creepy (recounting burning down an abandoned house, for example) and ends with basically asking her to be his girlfriend. And somehow it works. Given Gretchen's history of familial abuse, I had trouble believing this wouldn't immediately trigger her danger alarm. Donnie is sweet in many ways but he's also mentally ill and unstable. This is not going to end well. Many young people have poor romantic taste and Gretchen perhaps saw the good in him and thought perhaps she could fix him. Again, this is not going to end well.

*Drew Barrymore plays the school's English teacher and she didn't impress. She wasn't bad per se, but she wasn't really that good either.

The Verdict

A dull depressing mess. 3.0 out of 10. Don't bother.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Fight Club (1999)

The podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood is having a "Theme Month" dedicated to films that people thought were cool in college but as the years pass, one realizes they might not have been as deep and profound as one might think. The most recent episode is based on the 1999 film Fight Club, which, as is appropriate, I first saw as a student at the University of Georgia. So here's the podcast. And now for the review...

The Plot

A nameless Narrator (Edward Norton) works as a recall inspector for a large car company--he inspects car crashes to see if they were caused by faults in the car itself and decides whether it'd be cheaper to recall the car or to settle out of court with people injured (or the families of those killed) by the defective cars. Off-the-clock, he contents himself with expensive IKEA furniture and doesn't seem to have any human relationships.

Then he develops severe insomnia. When a doctor won't prescribe him a sleeping drug and he whines that he's suffering, the doctor tells him to check out a cancer support group to see real suffering. The Narrator becomes addicted to attending these groups even though he has none of the diseases because he enjoys the connections he forms with the people there...and then he meets Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter), who's doing the exact same thing.

This perturbs him, and so the two divide the support groups between them so they can avoid each other. Then while on a business trip, the Narrator befriends Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who claims to be a soap salesman. He ultimately moves into a run-down abandoned house with Durden when his condo mysteriously explodes. Durden begins romancing (or at least constantly banging) Marla as the two co-found an underground fighting club to counteract soulless materialism and the emasculation of American men, a club that soon grows out of control...

The Good

*The acting is really good. Norton does well as the Narrator who grows beyond empty materialism through his involvement with Durden. Pitt is appropriately dangerous and charismatic as Durden, who starts out engaging in petty and unhygienic trolling of society before progressing into outright violence. And Carter acts like, well, a junkie.

*The script is witty and flows well.

*The film shows the seductive nature and dangers of extremism. Durden does a good job calling out the emptiness of modern materialism, consumerism, and alienation from other people and even forming fight clubs isn't a bad thing given how people agree to participate and how it encourages men to excel physically. However, then they graduate to outright terrorism and that's not cool. Here's a poem (of sorts) about how fascism isn't going to reappear as comic-book Nazis but something far more deceptive. When our hero meets Bob (a man he met at a testicular-cancer support group) again and they both learn they're members of fight club unknown to each other, we see both male bonding and hero-worship--the kind that's fine in moderation but could potentially get very dangerous.

*Marla condemns modern throwaway society as well with her spiel about her dress, originally a bridesmaid's dress she got for $1 at a thrift store. Loved intensely for a day...then thrown away. She never goes to the extremes of Durden though. Even though she's clearly self-destructive with her drug use and sexual habits, that part at least is more rational.

*There's some good humor in there, especially a scene involving a liposuction clinic.

*Although especially lately people like to equate fascism and religion--and all too often organized religion has sold out to fascism to maintain its social hegemony--Durden's ideology is explicitly anti-religious (considering Durden's explicit denunciation of God and redemption) and even in many ways a substitute for the community-building functions of religion. The alt right, many of whose adherents are essentially freikorps LARPers, is often explicitly anti-Christian in terms of actual ethos and faith.

*Although at least one of my podcast companions was critical of the doctor for not prescribing the Narrator something like Ambien, I thought this a good example of someone telling the patient what they need to hear and not what they want to hear. One reason for a growing disease resistance to antibiotics is that doctors prescribe people drugs they don't need. Drugs aren't a quick-fix for everything and if the Narrator could fix his insomnia through exercise and herbal sleep aids, Ambien might not be needed.

The Bad

*The movie does run on for too long. Seriously, it's a nearly three-hour film. Good concept and well-executed, but that's still a problem. Tightening things up a bit isn't a problem--I cut my as-yet-unsold novel Battle for the Wastelands from 101K words to 89K words just by tightening the manuscript without cutting substantial content. Hell, I even added a scene that developed a character better. I'm not sure what parts of the film were flabby and needed tightening, but it is possible to snip a few seconds here and there to get a substantial reduction.

*There's a bit of a disconnect between the first and the second and third acts. The first act is about the Narrator, Marla, and support groups, while the second and third are about the fighting clubs and "Project Mayhem." Maybe if they had the Narrator meet Durden earlier, perhaps before he and Marla divide up the support groups? The Narrator losing interest in the support groups as the fighting club fills the emotional void the support groups did could be shown onscreen instead of just implied.

*Things get into suspension-of-disbelief territory once the police get involved. Trying to intimidate law enforcement to avoid investigating is going to backfire massively considering how tribal law enforcement is. Rather than back off, the police are going to get more aggressive. After all, their authority has been challenged and they can't have that. Given how law enforcement needs to be subverted as well for the plot to advance, perhaps we start seeing bored and frustrated rank-and-file cops joining the club and some stuff about how loyalty to the club trumps everything else? As Daniel and I discussed the other evening, crime has been in decline for years (although it might not have been obvious in the late 1990s), so people who joined the force thinking they'd be action heroes might be bored.

The Verdict

8.5 out of 10. Could stand to be tightened up a little bit.

Oh, and if you want an interesting fan theory, here's the notion that "Jack" is Calvin and Tyler Durden is really Hobbes. Hobbes, being a sentient figment of Calvin's imagination, has gone mad after being isolated for decades in Calvin's subconscious and now wants revenge on society for forcing Calvin to banish him and grinding his imaginative and lively pal down into a corporate drone.

The Consequences of a Westerosi Kingsmoot...

In early December, I blogged about an interesting fan-fiction written by a fellow member of my alternate history forum entitled A Parliament of Fowls: The First Kingsmoot of Westeros. Catelyn Stark persuading Renly and Stannis Baratheon to put their feud aside and join forces with her son to fight the Lannisters has led to an entirely new political order in the continent, a full-blown elective monarchy. That had some very interesting consequences...

These consequences are being explored in the sequel, The Glory of Ice: Reign of the Mockingbird. As those of you who are into the series know, the mockingbird is the personal insignia of one Petyr Baelish, more commonly known as "Littlefinger." As one of the most devious political operators in Westeros, he managed to finagle his way to the Iron Throne by doling out all sorts of political favors and manipulating everybody. All is peaceful for the moment, with the notable exception of the Iron Islands falling into civil war while the united Westerosi army--led by the lords of the Vale Littlefinger had promised lands to--gathers to curb-stomp them. However, A Parliament of Fowls ended with Stannis Baratheon seeing the following vision in his sorceress Melisandre's flames:

Stannis stared deeper into the flames as they kept dancing. And little by little, they morphed and changed. Stannis saw things he never thought he would. He saw himself being paraded through the Seven Kingdoms as a hero. He saw the Wall and the war. That great second god the red woman kept harping about approaching the North with all his icy might. He saw death knocking at the gates of Castle Black and approaching the doors of Winterfell. Stannis saw steel clash on steel and the Iron Throne shake from the quake of the Seven Kingdoms breaking apart once more. He saw the four directions of the earth clash in an eruption not seen since the doom came to Valyria. He saw a field of flowers burn and the sun darken. He saw a wolf and a stag go east, a lion roar, and a kraken tangle with a titan sitting on a throne of blood and bone. And finally he saw himself in a cloak of crows.

The kraken is the symbol of House Greyjoy and the Titan of Braavos is Littlefinger's family crest, so I imagine the war for the Iron Islands is going to be nasty and Littlefinger is going to get thoroughly unpleasant. Silver Phantom 2 holds the theory that he's a full-blown psychopath, as elucidated in Matt Staggs' essay. I am generally skeptical of branding prominent evil people as psychopaths--I view the idea of "ponerology" as essentially a eugenicist conspiracy theory held by extreme leftists, and evil people like Hitler and Stalin have demonstrated the capacity for emotional attachment that would disqualify them from being true psychopaths--but Littlefinger doesn't have to be essentially a highly-functional brain-damage case to be a real scumbag.

(I hold that Littlefinger is psychologically normal but is essentially a much, much more powerful male version of Sansa Stark who learned that life was not a song and ended up embittered and generally nasty as a result. Psychopath or evil neurotypical, either way he's a highly dangerous man.)

Looks like it's the calm before the storm...

The Authoritarian Spawn of Sandy Hook

Ever since the Sandy Hook shooting, there has been a lot of oxygen expended on various "solutions" to the mass-shooting problem in the United States. The problem with many of them is that they're potentially if not outright dangerous to the liberties of law-abiding citizens.

Right now, the conversation is being dominated by the topic of gun control, which as you all know I am generally not a fan of. I'm willing to consider increased funding to make sure the background-check system works (a gun-owner friend called it a joke during a Facebook discussion). Although I initially viewed New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg rather unfavorably, a lot of his ideas (minus the assault weapons ban) make sense. Heck, I've even suggested some of them on my own.

However, a lot of people with much more extreme agendas are using Sandy Hook as a platform. Certain elements of the media are trying to rebrand "gun control" as "gun safety," which is dishonest. You have people suggesting total gun bans. I've seen people claiming online--even people I consider friends--that if people aren't willing to renounce their right to bear arms in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, they're evil and selfish. I once saw an Internet commentator saying that "society" decided to end slavery, something that many people objected to and was ultimately a very costly effort. However, if "society" decides to take the same steps to change the availability of certain makes and models of guns, it would be for the best. This isn't just apples and oranges--it's comparing apples and rotten vegetables. You even have people petitioning that the NRA be declared a terrorist organization. The chance of that getting anywhere is rather small, but never underestimate how dangerous people who can vote can be if passions are aroused.

Another issue being discussed is increasing resources available for helping the mentally ill. The Virginia Tech shooter was involuntarily institutionalized as a threat to himself and others at one point, while the Tucson shooter demonstrated warning signs. The Sandy Hook shooter's mother was preparing to move across the country to get him help. Providing more resources to assist those who are mentally ill would be a good way to prevent these things from occurring again.

However, this can get very dangerous. Deinstitutionalization happened to a large degree due to abuses and poor conditions in the mental institutions of the time and those could recur very easily. After all, people in institutions might not be able to coherently describe anything done to them and it would be easy to write off any claims of abuse they make as being the rantings of a crazy person, if they can even get word out about their being abused at all. A member of my alternate-history message board (the one whose handle was Snarf, who wrote that Draka-cop story I blogged about years ago) has Asperger's Syndrome and said decades ago, people with Asperger's who might have been able to function on the outside with counseling, medication, etc. were simply institutionalized.

And Asperger's Syndrome gets into an entirely different issues. There have been attempts to link autism with the shooting already. Although this article and the articles it links to debunk the idea that people with Asperger's Syndrome are particularly violent, the damage has already been done. There are people out there who are claiming people with these conditions are unfeeling and dangerous, don't view other people as human, etc.

News flash--the condition that causes people to not view other people as human (in general, as opposed to being indoctrinated to dehumanize particular groups) is called psychopathy, not autism. However, just because something is false doesn't mean people won't believe it and that's dangerous because these people can vote.

I'm not predicting everyone with Asperger's Syndrome (or people who might not have a clinical condition but are simply quirky or not considered "normal" by their peers) are going to get rounded up. However, there are more subtle dangers--cruel peers who might maltreat some sufficiently "weird" kid (and if said "weird" kid eventually snaps, they'll no doubt claim all along they knew something was wrong with them and treated them as they deserved), arrogant know-it-all school officials (whose actual knowledge of such things can be summed up in the phrase "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing") recommending unnecessary or even destructive "treatment" ideas, etc. Thousands of well-meaning (or less well-meaning) school and community officials all across the United States can be more dangerous than the U.S. President.

And to top it off, earlier this week I found an article that flat-out makes eugenicist arguments alleging genetic predisposition to mass murder. I am not so reactionary as to immediately claim applying the concept of heredity to the mind as well as the body is a Nazi idea, but humans are not lower animals governed solely by instinct. A few years back, I read Social Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and one thing that struck me was the massive amount of brain development in the first year or two of life. This development is so profound I can't help but think it would play a dominant role, not heredity.

And this article not only makes neo-eugenicist arguments, it calls for blatantly authoritarian solutions, including "lifelong surveillance" of people with alleged "massacre genes." This is not only creepy and evil, but it's blatantly unconstitutional as well. Is there any authority in the United States that could issue a warrant authorizing this sort of thing? It certainly couldn't be a state court, as people often move throughout their lives. Maybe the foreign-intelligence courts that can issue roving wiretaps could in theory, but that's not their bailiwick.

I am not so lacking in empathy that I think (most) people advocating these positions have evil hearts. However, people with good intentions and a willingness to use state power to implement them have committed terrible evils in the past. I am not suggesting we refuse to make any changes to anything out of fear of some worst-case scenario despotism, but we need to tread very carefully. And most of all, we shouldn't be ignorant.