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Post by weightofechoes on Oct 12, 2004 14:30:39 GMT -5
Hi, I'm new to this board. Was just browsing through it and some people seem to think Donnie doesn't time travel at the end of the film. I disagree.
This only occured to me after watching the film again just now but perhaps he uses the car. When he's talking to the teacher about time travel, Donnie asks him about how to travel back in time. The teacher replies you need a "metal craft of any kind"; then Donnie asks "Like a Delorean?", referring to the time machine in Back to the Future.. Strange thing to ask if he wasn't thinking about maybe trying something similar himself. Presumably by this point he's starting to work out what he has to do.
I'm not sure exactly how he uses the car, or whether he takes Gretchen with him, but he definitely travels back in time. You see the film winding backwards as this is happening - and Richard Kelly says this is because Donnie's travelling back in time on the Director's Cut DVD commentary. Also, we know from The Philosophy of Time Travel book that Donnie's task is to guide "the artifact" (the jet engine) back into the primary universe. One way to do this would be by being where he would have been when the artifcat fell through the wormhole, once he's travelled back in time to the point just before the tangent universe has split off, i.e. just before the jet engine falls on his room. Back in the tangent universe he had to make sure the engine falls into the portal (presumably he uses his telekinetic powers for this). Then he goes back in time to meet it at the "other end", so to speak, although quite why he needs to be there I'm not sure - wasn't guiding it into the wormhole enough?
Some kind of sense has to be made of the fact that he's up the hill at the end; my suggestion is so that he can enter the wormhole just before the enginge does. Hence also why he gets back into bed just in time for the engine to land on him.
What do you think?
Understanding this film is serious business, man.
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Post by ProvidencePortal on Oct 12, 2004 15:10:13 GMT -5
Some kind of sense has to be made of the fact that he's up the hill at the end; my suggestion is so that he can enter the wormhole just before the enginge does. Hi weightofechoes -- very glad to have you here. I feel as though sense has been made of the fact Donnie's on the hilltop at the end. He's forced to head there to be close to the passing plane ... and near the vortex, into which he'll deposit the plane's engine using his 4th-Dimensional telekinetic powers. (My, that sound silly all typed out.) We've come to believe that the vortex seen swirling near the hilltop at the close of the movie is one end of a wormhole that spans both space and time. At one end is the TU on 10/30; at the other is the PU on 10/2. The engine is a metal vehicle able to pass the water boundary and, therefore, to travel through time (and space) to fall into the PU on 10/2, killing Donnie. So the engine travels through time, and it seems the entity that is Frank the Manipulated Dead does, too. But the people who live near the vortex in the PU (everyone seen in the TU) don't, I believe, traverse time at all. They are transported by other more cosmic, less tangible means -- maybe in spirit, maybe in their minds -- into the TU, where they live out 30 days of experiences in an instant of PU time. At the end, when they've all played their parts as Manipulated Living, Manipulated Dead and, in Donnie's case, the Living Receiver, they're all similarly transported back to the PU ... where no measurable time has passed since they departed. They awake that morning with vague memories of the TU -- all but Donnie, who of course doesn't wake up. This interpretation fits into the texts of the mythos and with comments made by Kelly in interviews and elsewhere. It also avoids a sticky question raised by your hypothesis: if Donnie (and, I'd argue, all the other people in the TU) needed to travel by the vortex back to the PU ... how'd the get from the PU to the TU in the first place? I'm not sure I can explain the quote you're attributing to Kelly until I hear it, but I'd bet it's possible he's describing the editing tactic and suggesting that Donnie's going back through his memories as he's transported to the PU. Feels tenuous, I know ... but I also don't feel like it would be wise to dimiss the proponderance of evidence -- that is, all the other stuff Kelly's said -- over one comment he makes in the director's commentary track. What are your thoughts? edit: misspelling
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Post by weightofechoes on Oct 12, 2004 16:42:34 GMT -5
Good points... The TU is something that broke off from the PU, like a branch on a tree. It's not something everyone needed to travel through a portal to get to; it just happened. Hence the imagery of the tree in the book. To get back into the PU you'd either need to go through the portal though or travel back in time - how else does Donnie get back into bed before the engine lands on his room? I've always assumed the engine's crashing onto his house marks the beginning of the TU - hence when Donnie travels back, he arrives either at the point at which the TU splits off, or just before. You could be right about the editing - I'll have to watch again with the commentary to check that. Even so, I still think he travels back in time - we see Donnie get back into bed after the winding back sequence, not before, implying he's back in October 2nd by this point. Also, the engine arrives from the TU at the beginng, which is why no-one knows where it came from, and Donnie's task is to guide it back, i.e. from the TU into the PU, where he is killed. Under hypnosis he says "I have the power to build a time machine" - why would he say this if he wasn't going to travel back in time himself? What is he referring to? It can't be the engine can it? The only things that need to go through the portal are the engine and perhaps also Donnie, to close it again from the other side. Given that Frank wakes him (or rather his counterpart) up, the Donnie who's travelled back can take his place in bed, and this is the Donnie who dies. Time is working in a loop here; the circle is completed by the portal from the TU back into the PU. Donnie is killed in the PU having arrived back from the TU, but the TU has already split off before this - perhaps the point at which Frank wakes Donnie is the beginning of the TU, come to think of it. I'm less sure about all this than I was when I wrote my first post, but I think the sequence, then, goes something like this: 1. Frank wakes Donnie in the TU, or from out of the PU into the TU. 2. Then everything that we see apart from the first and last scenes of the film are within the TU. 3. Donnie from the TU travels back (maybe through the portal along with the jet engine) and gets back into bed in the PU. 4. This is early in the morning of October the 2nd, by which point Frank has already woken Donnie (around midnight) - hence perhaps for a short time (depending on when exactly the TU begins) there are actually two Donnies in the PU, one of whom is then killed. The other Donnie, who is, so to speak, the first Donnie, needs not to be in bed when the engine lands; the second Donnie does, so that the time loop can be complete. I don't think it can be the same Donnie in bed at the end as the Donnie Frank wakes at the beginning. If it were, we wouldn't see him in bed laughing before he goes to sleep. What would he be laughing at if he didn't know what was about to happen to his counterpart and what had already happened to him? Hence the Donnie in bed laughing at the end is the Donnie from the TU who has just travelled back into the PU to complete the loop. Everyone else wakes up and the time line of the PU continues as it would have had the TU never happened. All the usual paradoxes of time travel are coming out of the woodwork here. I'm too tired to think about this any more now. I realise my original point about the car being the time machine might not be as plausible as I first thought but I'm still sure Donnie travels back in time somehow, either through the portal with the engine or inside the TU and back past the point before the TU begins, thus bringing him back into the PU. Of course, it's possible Richard Kelly is just playing with us and the plot's full of holes. That of course would be a heretical suggestion on such a board as this and I wish to disassociate myself from it
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Post by rightfielder21 on Oct 12, 2004 16:48:05 GMT -5
"We" don't believe that PU Donnie physically leaves his bed... We believe that the 28 days in the Tangent Universe is only a matter of seconds or even fractions of a second when compared to the PU... So Donnie and the others, "spiritually/mentally" if you will, traveled to the TU... Their body's never actually left the PU... I'm curious; do you believe that Donnie physically left his bed in the primary universe? How does he physically travel to the Tangent Universe originally, if he didn't know how to? How does he travel back to the primary universe, with the engine? Does he get sucked up? We also don't believe in a time "loop" per say... We prescribe to the parallel universes as opposed to "conventional" time travel... As for the same Donnie being in bed, we believe it was the same Donnie, but a more enlightened Donnie, through the journey through the TU… Why he is laughing is up for discussion, but I believe that he new what was going to happen to him by staying in the bed, but had such a feeling of euphoria at that moment that he may never had again if he got out of bed, he decided he was content to go to the place that he “had so much to look forward to”… There is a lot to respond to with your posts (a great thing, a lot of substance)… Keep ‘em coming… “We” will convert you yet… It sounds like some religion…”We believe in…” ;D
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Post by gretchen on Oct 12, 2004 17:42:06 GMT -5
i am not even going to validate this with a response.
and quite FRANKly... i'm rather appalled that prov and RF did respond to it.
welcome to the board weight, but this post does not belong on this board.
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Post by weightofechoes on Oct 12, 2004 17:46:52 GMT -5
sorry, i realised i posted on the wrong thread after i'd done it. Also posted the same thing twice too. I'm new here. It won't happen again. What's so bad about my interpretation?
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Post by rightfielder21 on Oct 12, 2004 17:47:19 GMT -5
i am not even going to validate this with a response. and quite FRANKly... i'm rather appalled that prov and RF did respond to it. welcome to the board weight, but this post does not belong on this board. I didn't even realize it was in the "News" section...
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Post by ProvidencePortal on Oct 13, 2004 6:55:23 GMT -5
Honestly, neither did I. We're bad boys, Righty ... I just did "10 most recent posts," clicked and responded. Sorry Gretch. I'll pay better attention -- especially considering all the soapboxing I've been doing about us maintaining the board correctly.
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Post by gretchen on Oct 13, 2004 9:51:13 GMT -5
there's nothing bad about your interpretation! i just didn't want to answer something where it didn't belong.(plus prov and RF pretty much said what i would have )i understand you are new, so don't worry about it. ha, exactly prov! it's okay boys, but you know how i am!
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Post by Madridarko on Oct 14, 2004 22:52:29 GMT -5
Hey gretch, litghen up. I had not noticed this was in the wrong section either, I was about to respond when I saw your comentary. Whoever started the thread, just make sure you try not do it intentioanlly again because you might get a gretch-ticket. Also I think that all of the posted ideas are good ideas. I have an idea of my own from your opening sentence. I don't actually donnie traveled back in time directly, but more like went back, almost retracing his steps and made another descision. It's almost like rewinding a movie, you don't really go directly back, but because you change a choice in the beggening, all that followed that choice is changed. Appearantly Donnie is able to do this with his "superpowers only as a ending step to finish closing the tangent univerese, aka, after he first sends the jet engine back in time too. The engine I belive is the only true thing that actually goes back in time.
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Post by gretchen on Oct 14, 2004 23:15:44 GMT -5
ooooh a gretch-ticket. i like that. i do apologize, weightofechoes, and hope i have not scared you off! you caught me on a very bad day which wasn't helped by some issues we've had with an impolite guest.
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Post by Madridarko on Oct 14, 2004 23:23:58 GMT -5
was it that same day that you nearly typed the head of that guy who started bestmovie ever thread in the music section. and he used to put dots at the end of every word? That was a horrible day. Was that the same day buu started posting his comment all over the website?
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Post by gretchen on Oct 14, 2004 23:28:00 GMT -5
yeah... that was a bad day.
i'm really very nice... i just... i'm a perfectionist. and i like things organized... and i just don't like people messing with my stuff! (our stuff!)
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Post by Madridarko on Oct 15, 2004 18:49:15 GMT -5
Wow, nice combo... Perfectionist, possesivnist, and mood swinginist.
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Post by gretchen on Oct 15, 2004 19:20:09 GMT -5
go on and push me...
madri.
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