PART III. God, abandonment, and Donnie, the messiah!

Existentialism, as we know, can be atheistic or not. Donnie Darko deals with the question of God directly, in conversations between Donnie, his therapist, and his science teacher, but also allegorically.

In my previous post, I talked about a telling conversation with the Science Teacher who confirms that God's existence doesn't matter- for even if God did exist, we would still have choice. We would still have the choice to betray God's will. This is reflective of Sartre's take: God shouldn't, and doesn't, matter, here on Earth. We decide our life for ourselves.

Speculations like these echo throughout the film- for instance, Roberta Sparrow, the ex-nun who wrote the inspiring Philosophy of Time Travel and is endearingly called Grandma Death by the local teenagers, whispers one inaudible phrase in the movie in Donnie's ear: "Every living creature on earth dies alone." This not only foreshadows Donnie's death, but it also touches on the existentialist consequence of abandonment. Our friend D. Darko discusses abandonment, which merely means the absence of God and the conclusions of this isolation, with the beloved Therapist. "I don't debate it anymore, It's absurd." Donnie announces vaguely. The therapist clarifies, "The search for God is absurd?" Donnie replies, "It is if everyone dies alone."

Interesting- Donnie does address abandonment, but not as an effect of existentialism per se, but rather as the reason for his agnosticism. Why does God matter if we all die alone? Our own abandonment leads us to ambivalence about a higher power. It is notable that Donnie dies alone- alone in more than a physical sense. He is the only one who dies knowing the answer to that impossible question "What if?" He knows what would have happened if he had lived. But Donnie chooses to die- or rather, he chooses to be killed. This action (albeit a passive one, in a literal sense) is Christ-like, for Donnie dies to save mankind, and to save mankind from sin. He directly saves his girlfriend Gretchen, his mother and sister, but also seems to save others in a less obvious sense- he saves Frank from committing vehicular manslaughter as well, not just his girlfriend from being run over. In the final montage, we see Jim Cunningham inexplicably wake up crying- could it be that this previously static character has a moment of sentimental clarity and he sees the wrong in his ways? (According to Burgess, this means Donnie Darko is good literature, so to speak: the characters are allowed to change.) Or as Sartre says "In reality and for the existentialist, there is no love apart from the deeds of love."And Donnie's final act is his act of love, redemption, and selflessness.

Moving backwards (forwards? nowhere? time gets jumbled.), before Donnie's death, we see hints at this biblical parallel. There is the obvious: the coming of Judgement Day, the apocalypse, Armageddon, or whatever you may call it. Frank informs Donnie about the end of the world, and constantly reminds him when it will end (28 days, 14 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds are his first words in the movie.) So it's hard to deny the godliness of Frank (the freaky bunny!). He is all the godly omnis, as I call them: omnipresent, omniscient, and sometimes even omnipotent. By this, I basically mean, he is everywhere, knows the future, and controls Donnie. For instance, Frank randomly appears in the cinema next to Donnie and a sleeping Gretchen and commands Donnie to burn Jim Cunningham's house to the ground- this seems like one of God's inexplicable commandments, but this action reveals Cunningham as a child pornographer, and he is subsequently brought to justice. This enforces all three omnis of God: he can appear at any place, knows that Cunningham is up to no good and must be exposed, and has the power over Donnie to have him carry out the ugly deed of arson. As Donnie leaves the theatre, I noted a clever throwback to this Christian theme: the theatre is playing "The Last Temptation of Christ." (See this exchange in the theatre: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbBlGBoUms, which begins about one minute into the video.)

In a sense, I believe that this is Donnie's last temptation for it is the last deed he commits under the control of Frank. Afterwards, he realizes that the future is up to him to decide, not up to Frank, and he lets himself be killed for the sake of others. Although this is a passive action (he does not do harm to himself, but waits in his room for the jet engine to crush him), it is deeply rooted in the most powerful and vital choice in the film.

Rosie