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From:	Ben (88.147.166.209)
Subject:	Re: Donnie Darko Explanation (with spoilers)
Date:	September 4, 2008 at 8:05 am PST

In Reply to: Donnie Darko Explanation (with spoilers) posted by Jinx on October 9, 2003 at 5:39 pm:

OK. But what about Frankie saving Donnie from the artifact? Frankie died in the Tangent Universe which gives him the power to manipulate Donnie the living manipulated and so stop the world ending. When Donnie is talking to him psychiatrist he says that frankie saved his life so he had to help him. We can see this as a trick then to help him manipulate Donnie. Or rather he did this to choose a living manipulated who has the necessary qualifications to save the world.

There seems to be a problem with this. Frankie only died in the Tangent universe because he saved Donnie's life, which had the result of Donnie being at Grandmother Sparrow's house with Gretshen when he was, and bringing about the whole sequence of events that led to Gretschen and frankie's death.

The tangent universe assumes a split in space time and a deviant time line. Two separate time lines. The time of the tangent universe, judging from the film seems to operate normally in terms of life experience. So there doesn't seen to me any way of getting around this.

Frankie is a time space free agent because he died 'in between' the universes. Before he died he was not a free agent, rather travelling on God's path as shown by the watery heart tracks. So his free action is after he died. He died because he saved Donnie. And he was only able to save Donnie because he died. Frankie killed himself, and he was able to kill himself because he'd killed himself.

I would love someone to give an explanation of this. The film is good - I enjoyed the soundtrack etc. But it does seem ultimately illogical. Everything else does have explanations that could be postulated but this seems fundamental if we aren't to interpret the film as a schizo fantasy constructed in the mind of Donnie, and divorced from real life - i.e. the whole film is in his head, where things can be illogical. Time is tricky and films about it always mess with my head - I guess maybe we don't have to be logical about a mental construct which is wildly different from how we experience time. But I can't really accept that because this is a construct, not real.

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