Donnie Darko: Opening Analysis

Another key story influence for me was Donnie Darko, a self-intriguing, mind puzzlingly film full of enigma codes. It explores the idea of “Big Brother”, always watching over in a modern day society, dangers of a government gaining too much power over its citizens. The government can abuse its abundance of

authority by controlling all of the media available to the citizens. A sci-fi psychological thriller, follows the journey of high school student Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) and his suffocating suburban lifestyle, in this self-intriguing, mind puzzlingly film full of enigma codes. Director Richard Kelly has really worked on giving the film details of verisimilitude, in a very perplexed nature. The opening is probably the scene I found most thought-provoking, looking at is also fro a visual perspective. We then have a forward tracking shot to reveal our protagonist, Donnie, lying in the middle of the road, looking like a motionless corpse. Richard Kelly has also used a blue filter at this point, to make any colour appear bleak and washed out, this further expresses Donnie’s isolated lifestyle. As we continue to track closer to Donnie a high pitch, non-diegetic murmuring sound begins to get louder to build a tense atmospheric tone, of both mystery and secrecy. The camera begins to track around Donnie, so we get a full view of his appearance, to ultimately engage more with the character. At this is point a piano starts to play to signify the movement onto the next part of the narrative. The camera jump cuts to show establishing shots of the location so we can further acquire more information of the surroundings and the time of day it is. The camera continues panning the landscape until Donnie stands up and it stops moving, Donnie then turns to face the camera, but not directly. Donnie slightly smiles to himself in a very sinister manner. This enigmatic smile gives us clues to how Donnie is not completely letting on to his true identity, his perplexed facial expression also informs us that Donnie has experienced some find of revelation.