This weekend we watched the cult classic, Donnie Darko.
The film is disturbing, challenging, and at least a little bit confusing.
The plot involves Donnie, a teenager with emotional problems and apparent hallucinations, in a series of acts guided by a mysterious, disturbing looking 6-foot-tall rabbit. (Harvey, anyone?)
As Donnie is led by the rabbit to go back and change the past, I was left to ponder the extent to which his changing of the story was a good thing. He was able to act selflessly to transform his own story into one of redemption, to save a couple of lives along the way, also.
But the rabbit had led Donnie to do a couple of things that would now be left undone. One chain of events initiated by the rabbit put Donnie in the right place to keep a girl from being harassed by the school bullies. One action the rabbit led Donnie to perform led to the discovery of a secret child pornography studio and/or distribution center.
It seems that the scary rabbit led Donnie to create a better world–right up the end where Donnie returns to undo what had been done.
Have you seen the movie? Do you think the undoing of the past at the end is ultimately a good thing or a bad thing?
