DONNIE DARKO

Today I watched a movie named DONNIE DARKO. Oh, I must confess that I had a big surprise!

I like almost all kinds of movies and I always wait good things from the movies I watch, sometimes they reach my expectations, sometimes not. About this movie, I was expecting something really big.

I had read some reviews about it and they all said it is a good movie, so I was

waiting for a classic, a special movie.

And now you must be thinking: “Oh, he got very disappointed, because he’s taking too much time to talk about the movie….” And do you want to know?

No, I got so HAPPY!

It’s almost a perfect movie for me! It has lots if interesting things to think about.

Before I talk about it, let me tell you what I think it is a good experience in terms of cinema: in my opinion a movie must be interesting not just while it’s being played, but after we go out of the cinema and when the TV is off, and Donnie Darko is one of those

movies that makes me feel strange for days…

Now, while I write this text I’m still intrigued by it.

Well, let’s see its plot: Donnie Darko, the name of the movie, is still the name of the main character, performed by Jake Gillenhaal (a rising actor). Donnie is a strange, intelligent and different teenager, which has problems with all people around him. When we meet the boy, he is already in a psychic treatment, but until this point, things are under control. The real problems start when Donnie faces his most new friend: a big, white and Scary rabbit called Frank.

Frank, the rabbit, tells Donnie to keep doing destructive things, and the boy can’t say no, because the rabbit had saved him from a very curious and mysterious death some time ago. Donnie gets always far from sanity and he takes all the ones around him to this deep and dark hole.

An intelligent and original movie that plays with limits of imagination and questions what is really real in the universe. If this is not enough, the true story starts when Frank, the neurotic giant rabbit, says the world is going to end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. Not for coincidence, in Halloween. In the end, you will definitely want to watch it again.

If you are ready to exercise your brain, watch it. But remember: things are never what they seem to be.

DARK, DARKEST, DARKO!

WHAT ARE DREAMS? GIFTS OR CURSES?

“If being crazy means living life as if it really matters, then I don’t care if we are completely insane.” (April’s though about trying to make dreams come true). We have just one life to live and sometimes just one chance to take risks and maybe (just maybe) be happy. If you let it go, you can never find yourself again in the middle of this complicated web of sorrows called life. Forget to live for a while and when you open your eyes again and take a look around you will find out that life was gone, and possibilities don’t even exist anymore. What if nothing is possible? What if you were fated to fail? Would you accept destiny or would you have the strength to fight?

‘Revolutionary road’ was recorded this year (2009) and it’s a movie that brings the sensation that everything is possible, existence is beautiful, and then, after one or two scenes, you are sure that life is a lie, a dream, a bitter and dreary dream. In Brazil the movie’s name was translated into a different meaning, appropriated we must say, but in disaccording: “It was just a dream”.

In this movie we see Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet working together again. They, who are one of the most famous couple in cinema since they actuated in Titanic, are just brilliant in this contemporary tragedy called ‘life’. The story which is based in a namesake book (a best seller by David Yates) starts with a couple’s plans and dreams. They are beautiful, young, and full of hope: “There’s nothing in the world you couldn’t do or be!” Says Winslet’s character named April to her husband Frank, represented by Dicaprio. They get married, have two children, and move to a neighborhood called Revolutionary Road, there they live in a beautiful house and raise their children while all their neighbors envy them. Frank starts working in the same company his father used to work and April has to give up her biggest dream that was to be an actress, to become a housewife. Time keeps going relentless and they are always the same, they slowly die as flowers in a lengthened winter. Years after a happy marriage they realize that they are nothing but simple and ordinary people who can’t stand an ordinary life. They fight everyday and kill themselves with rude words and guilt. April wants a different life in which she can really feel alive and Frank believes that he wasn’t born to be just a forgotten employee, that’s when they decide to make a dream of theirs come true: they decide go to live in Paris. Frank is about to quit his job, and April Was finally going to do something by herself, but in the last moment they find out she is pregnant again and then Frank is invited to a promotion in the company. Once more they can’t go on although they want it more than anything in the world, another dream ends in a dry and melancholic deadlock. April starts hating her baby and Frank and their relationship gets an unsustainable level: a true love turns into a weighty hate. How can people let their lives go like this?

As the director (Winslet’s husband) says: “The dynamic between April and Frank was so powerful and so realistic and it felt like you were a fly on the wall listening to an intimate relationship disintegrate”. Watching a movie like this one help us think a little about life, about how small and weak we are in this infinite universe. You feel like in a prison from where you can’t escape because this prison is your own life! That’s human beings. You can’t point a finger cause there’s no good and bad guys, there are just guys. If you are not happy about your life go on and change it before it changes you.