Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut

Rating R Formats DVD Genre suspense Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne Directed by Richard Kelly Publisher Fox Home Entertainment External Links Official Site Fox Home Entertainment

It might not have SE in the title, but this is a must own special edition of the famous cult hit. Not only does it offer a substantially different cut of the film, but a new commentary and several new featurettes. The trick here is to make sure you hang on to the old edition, which is also packed with a completely different set of outstanding commentaries and featurettes.

The new stuff here is great. Richard Kelly invites Kevin Smith to do the commentary with him to fill in the inevitable long pauses that would result from Kelly having to do yet another commentary on the film. Those hoping for a more serious approach to the material might be better off with the original disc, although Kelly's insights are fresh.

The rest of the documentary material offers a look at the film's growing and avid fanbase even going so far as too spoof it in #1 Fan: A Darkumentary. Also interesting, They Made Me Do It Too- The Cult of Donnie Darko, which features edited interviews with several fans and critics about the rabid interest fans have in the film.

If Richard Kelly never made another movie, I'm willing to bet his place in cinema history would still be secure. When it was originally released in 2001, Donnie Darko took the underground cult cinema crowd by storm with its complex blend of comedy, science fiction, horror and drama. Though some felt left in the dark by Richard Kelly's loose cosmology, many saw Donnie Darko as an important statement about cosmology itself and about the need to not surrender our wills but to bend them to a clearly worthy purpose in a world that seeks to commodify and plasticize the soul.

In fact, so great was the effect of Donnie Darko on many younger viewers, that the film became something to watch over and over again. I myself have seen the film seven or eight times and am still deeply moved not just by Donnie's choice, but by the film's deep regard for the fate of all its characters. There are no dispensable characters in any of the narrative universes Donnie Darko gives us, just deeply flawed people full of themselves and all the evils we associate with a broken world. Donnie's choice to do his part in the saving of that world, his embrace of it just at the moment he should rage, his understanding of his connection to the other people in it, is organic faith at it's absolute most compelling for me, faith based on the idea that to save ourselves we must allow ourselves to be led down the correct path. Not only do our individual choices matter but they have cosmic significance. If anything Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut affirms that even more.

Those hoping for a genuinely substantially different cut of the film are not likely to be disappointed. Donnie Darko: The Director's Cut offers plenty of new things to think about even as it affirms the earlier versions sense of urgency about spiritual journey.

The differences in the content of the two films include the re-instatement of many of the deleted scenes that were included on the DVD but the director's cut goes far beyond that. There is much more voiceover by Frank- the menacing rabbit - we hear Grandma Death speak and several text sections from her book are used as interstitials. I seem to remember thinking that the music is also substantially different with a more orchestral feel, although fans of the first film will be happy that Gary Jules' rendition of Tears for Fears "Mad World" is still included. Also worth mentioning is the revamp and addition of special effects. In the interest of keeping this is as spoiler free as possible, I won't say anymore. Rest assured though, you'll be seeing a more fleshed out, richer version of the film fans know and love.

In the end, I found the director's cut more fulfilling and more satisfying because it seemed even more interested in addressing the big questions. "Are we alone? Do we die alone?" a character says at one point. This question that we all struggle with, this abyss we all look into, looms over the characters in this film but so does a great hope, a blue sky. Even as the movie lampoons the self-help quackery of Jim Cunningham (cunning-ham, get it?) it manages to take comfort in the trustworthyness of truth trying to escape a cultural stranglehold. Our own individual place in that struggle can lead us where we need to be, our own individual place outside the confines of 'ism' and 'ologies that in the end can only point the way to a greater mystery.