Donnie Darko opens with a fade in to a mid shot of a silhouetted group of trees in front of an open mountainside. The time of day is early morning as you can see the early morning sky in the background. The shot then pans to the left, before turning into facing the road and changing the shot type to a wide shot revealing a person in the distance lying still on the road. The camera then slowly tracks towards the person while diegetic crickets are heard in the background. The camera slowly tracks forward towards the person and while doing so non-diegetic music starts playing. The music is slightly eerie and mysterious, adding a certain tension to the whole piece and amplifying the strangeness of having a person lying in the middle of the road. The person moves around as the camera approaches’, revealing that they are alive, while a bicycle is revealed to the right of the screen. The person looks up, with a dazed look about their body language and the person is revealed to be a teenage boy. The non-diegetic music changes as a relaxing piano chord is introduced, giving the feeling of early morning and just waking up. As the shot tracks forward it is now a long shot revealing the boy Cleary sitting up looking down at the ground. The shot then pans around to the back of the boy who is now looking out over the mountainside before tracking around to reveal his face against the forest behind him. The boy's expression is one of a dazed, 'Where am I?' type of expression. The shot then cuts to a surveying pan of an extra long shot of the mountainside. The boy stands up and interrupts the shot changing the shot to a MCU as he gets in the frame. The surveying pan stops on the boy who is staring out over the mountainside. The boy turns around and looks down past the camera and the piano chords start again. The boy slowly starts smiling and you can hear him snigger. He walks away from the camera and as he walks away the title 'Donnie Darko' comes across the screen with an ELS of the mountainside in the background. You can see the character was confused about being up there, but then obviously isn't too worried as you see him laughing about it, you can tell he’s' different. The shot then fades to white and changes to a mid shot of Donnie (the boy) riding his bike and pans back while Donnie rides his bike. Non-divergent music then starts while the camera tracks Donnie on his bike. When the music starts the scene turns into a montage of various things Donnie passes on his way home, such as a sign for a Halloween carnival and some speed walkers. The soundtrack adds a good touch to this as it is a weird song in the fact that it is both happy and depressing, it could be perceived differently by optimists and pessimists. As Donnie turns into his driveway, the camera tracks off to the right to reveal a man blowing leaves off of his garden. As his character is introduced the non-diegetic music turns more rocky and manly as drums and an electric guitar solo are introduced, maybe implying that he is different from Donnie and he is less up to interpretation. The man is approached by a young looking girl coming up in the background of a MS of him blowing the grass away. She goes up to him holding some keys and he replies by blowing her in the face with his machine. She looks annoyed and the camera pans around revealing her going away. He blows her again with his machine and she runs away. The camera then cuts to a low angle mid shot of Donnie getting off his bike and wandering through a door frame. The shot then cuts to a mid shot of a small girl jumping on a trampoline and pans down before tracking off to reveal a MCU of a middle aged women reading a Stephen King novel. Stephen King is a great author of horror and slightly creepy novels, Donnie Darko falls under this genre and the placement of this book is there as an inside note. The women looks up and a cut is followed to where she is looking and a pan of a mid shot of Donnie entering the house is follows that. The scene ends with a MCU of Donnie opening the fridge with a sign saying 'Where’s Donnie?' written on the fridge. This shows that the family are unaware of Donnie’s whereabouts and no one is really sure how Donnie got up to the top of that hill.
By Leo Faulks
No comments:
Post a Comment