Arts Explored # 5-
Art Film
In terms of movies, I am very much a romance/romantic comedy kind of person. My favourite movies include The Notebook, Mean Girls, Knocked Up and Easy A. Donnie Darko is a very different movie than my usual line up. Compared to go my go to movies it was a very dark, complex and confusing.
In the case of this movie it was very outside of my usual, but thankfully I knew a few people who have watched, enjoyed and understood the movie. When I told my roommate Kayla that I was watching this movie for class she got really excited and said she really liked the movie and had watched it many times. When I asked her if we could talk about it she said we would be here all day if we did, clearly the movie had a huge impact on her.
Plot
The movie starts showcasing the Darko family. Looking in it seems as though there are some interesting family dynamics, Donnie appears to be the bad seed, and his older sister who is Harvard is the “better” of the two. There is also the younger sister. The first big thing to happen is the engine from a plane falls into the family home, specifically into Donnie’s room. Donnie was however not home at the time. After the incident occurs Donnie meets Frank, a giant bunny and is told that the world will end in 28 days. During the rest of the movie Frank (whom only Donnie can see) convinces him to engage in acts of vandalism such as flooding the school and burning down a mans house. Frank also makes reference to time travel, and Donnie begins asking questions to his science teacher to find out what he can about time travel. All the while we know that Donnie suffers from some kind of mental illness because he is on drugs, and see a psychiatrist. At the very end there is a huge turn of events which makes the watcher question what the whole movie is about, but I wont spoil this for someone who has not seen the movie.
All during the movie I sat there and was unsure if the events of the movie were actually taking place, or if they were a figment of the Donnie’s imagination.
Discussion
As I mentioned my roommate who loved the movie agreed to talk about her perspective of the movie. Before I had even finished the movie she told me that the whole time the movie was on she was confused, and thought the movie was dumb. She informed me that at the end of the movie everything would make a lot more sense. She said it was very much an “OHHHHHH I GET IT!” kind of moment that I would have. To be honest I did not really have this moment, so therefore I think that one’s perspective plays a huge role.
Lauren: “So he dead the whole time?”
Kayla: “No, not exactly Lauren, lets rewatch the last 5 minutes together.”
*we played the last 5 minutes of the movie
Lauren: “OHHHHHH I seeeeeeee, there is the worm hole and the plane is going through the hence the vessel and the shuttle needed for time travel”
Kayla: “Lauren look and there is the engine”
Lauren: “OHHHH and then it goes back in time and things are different and that’s why Donnie died”
Kayla: “Yes, and Donnie wanted to go back in time so he would die and rather than his girlfriend Gretchen.”
This part of the discussion I felt was the most important because it illustrates Kayla explaining her perspective and me rewatching the video and understanding her perspective of what happened.
Future Implications
As a future educator it is important to teach children about different perspectives. For some children this is a very difficult concept to understand that what I am thinking in my head is very different than what you are thinking. In the case of children those who are still a little ecocentric may think that they way they perceive a movie is what everyone else is thinking (Shafer, 2009). As an educator it is important to make sure that children understand that people who watch the same movie can have very different views. This could mean one person can like it, and another can dislike it, or in the case of a more complex movie such as Donnie Darko it can mean one person thinks one thing happened and the other thinks something else happened.
Perception:
The definition of perception according to Schirrmacher and Fox is “The ability to receive sensory impressions from one’s surroundings and relate them to what one knows” (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p. 367).
I strongly feel that this definition explains how Kayla understood the movie and to her things just clicked, while for me I was still left a little confused. We both had the same visual and audio sensory impressions, but the way we connected to the movie, was different because we both have very different pasts, and very different life experiences to relate.
References
Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J.E. (2009). Art and creative development for
young children (6th Ed.). Belmont, CA: Delmar.
Shaffer, D. (2009). Social and Personality Development (6th Ed.) Belmont
, CA: Belmont.
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