In his recent countdown of 66 great villains in film, pop culture blogger and former Stylus writer Andrew Unterberger profiles Kitty Farmer, the shrill, moral-absolutist, pedophile-defending teacher from Donnie Darko. After summarizing her opposition to the titular time-bending hero, Unterberger notes the movie’s “breakout quote” – “Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion!” – and says he doesn’t understand why it became the movie’s most recognizable line.
I agree with him in principal, but at the same time I’m not surprised it caught hold. It’s one of the only lines from the movie that really works as just a straight-up joke and nothing else – it doesn’t have anything directly to do with censorship, time travel, or teenage love. It also does not fall flat like some of the other, less successful, throwaway moments, like the blandly unfunny Smurf segment, or some of Drew Barrymore’s confusingly unnecessary sequences.
Yet the film doesn’t really deal in Snorg T-Shirt slogans. Its best scenes are very subtle. If a single key scene could be chosen for as this film’s breakout in a perfect world, it could very well be this one (beware – this clip is low-volume and poorly synced), as Donnie and his love interest, Gretchen, share a moment of exurbian romance.
This carefully paced bit of high school frustration symbolizes the strongest tones of the film; their conversation stumbles uncertainly forward in the all-too-familiar dance of young love, than suddenly pivots to an absurd punchline with just a hint of Lynch-ian subversion to it. Donnie’s failure to notice the man sooner just drives home his fixation on Gretchen as well as the absurdity of the situation.
Donnie Darko is a very good film that doesn’t quite live up to its inflated reputation – at its worst, it seems to be a very pale shadow of La Jetée. But at its best – as in the above-mentioned scene – it mixes speculative scientific and rational humanistic themes with a degree of skill worthy of its predecessors.
Tags: Andrew Unterberger, Calling All-In With A-J Suited, Donnie Darko, Drew Barrymore, Kitty Farmer, La Jetee, Shabby Youtube Clips, Smurfs, Sparkle Motion
