I think Kelly started out with a very clear-cut science fiction idea about his story. There is a correct literal interpretation of Donnie Darko. Unfortunately, it’s probably the weakest link of the film. Once you understand what’s really going on, you lose the “philosophical muddle” that Kelly introduced as a smoke screen.

In the original cut, you just don’t have enough information to figure out the story. You then have to superimpose your own ideas onto the structure of the film. It’s that ambiguity that I think makes the film. Donnie Darko works best as an exploration of the angst of existence, specifically the big questions you worry about as a teenager.

I think Kelly erred in releasing a director’s cut, which makes the sci-fi elements more explicit. There’s a reason David Lynch never explains his movies. Literalism removes the weird space that exists in ambiguity.

Kelly hasn’t yet lived up to the promise of his freshman effort. Maybe he and Mark Z. Danielewski should get together and talk about the perils of cult status.

The only point I’d disagree with you on is your assertion that Kelly wasn’t deliberately trying to be profound. Listening to the director’s commentary, I found Kelly to be very smart but very pretentious in his vision, and not always in total control of his material—almost a gifted adolescent, just like Donnie himself.

“Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life” is currently in the review queue. It’s available through Netflix and other commercial outlets.

(If you’ve seen the film, now read on…)

One very obvious point about this movie which everybody seems to miss is that, quite apart from all its pretensions to philosophical depth, on another level it’s simply a ferocious parody of two old Frank Capra movies, both starring James Stewart.

In “It’s a Wonderful Life”, the opening scene shows the hero on the verge of committing suicide because he considers his life to be a worthless catalogue of failure, but he is talked out of it by an angel who reveals to him how much worse off the world would have been without the contribution he has made simply by existing – the exact opposite of Donnie Darko’s situation!

And in “Harvey” the hero is thought by his relatives to be insane because he claims that his best friend is a giant anthropomorphic rabbit whom only he can see. The creature (actually a “pooka”, whatever that is) does of course genuinely exist, and uses its supernatural powers, combined with its anarchic but basically good-natured personality, to make life much more complicated, but more fun and therefore ultimately better for anyone who isn’t too uptight to play along.

Again, Harvey and Frank share a desire to guide the protagonist in a certain direction, mostly by playing elaborate practical jokes, but Frank is the exact opposite of Harvey’s well-meaning merry prankster. Though they are of course both six-foot-tall bipedal bunnies – can this possibly be a coincidence?

So really all this film is doing is taking a slice of grotesquely over-sweetened good old American schmaltz that airs every Xmas and is universally acclaimed as a masterpiece, despite being so sugary that diabetics shouldn’t even watch the trailer, throw in a few motifs from another similar film by the same director, and filter it through nihilistic goth sensibilities until Jimmy Stewart becomes a sulky teen whose ultimate purpose in life is to do us all a favour by dying.

Or am I simply reading too little into a movie which I personally think is massively overrated because people mistook doom-and-gloom-laden muddle for philosophical depth, and the presence of a freaky-looking rabbit-person for artistic genius?

Frankly I suspect that “Donnie Darko” was never meant to be anything more than a sly dig at a horribly sentimental old Frank Capra film, and the director was amazed when people started reading all these profound meanings into it, but played along because clearly he was onto a good thing. This might explain why he has been unable to create a satisfactory follow-up now that he’s trying to be deep and meaningful on purpose.

By the way, on a related note, readers might like to look out for a short film which I think won an award in the UK a few years ago. It’s called “Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life”, and assuming I’m right about “Donnie Darko”, it makes pretty much the same joke in a much neater package, and with lots more laughs. I daresay it’s on YouTube somewhere, though since it’s fairly recent, it probably isn’t meant to be.

The original cut leaves the “mystery” unsolved, and thus makes it a movie about existential angst, which can never really be solved. Especially when you’re in the midst of high school insecurities. The emotional core of the movie is more true than any literal interpretation. It’s the best “teenage angst” film I’ve ever seen.

Richard Kelly seems to have thrown that away in the interest of making his story more explicit. His “Director’s Cut” makes the sci-fi and deus-ex-machina elements manifest. The convoluted sci-fi elements (which I agree were the literal meaning of the movie) are the least interesting parts of the movie. The original Donnie Darko confusion was the hook to the movie.