~The Four Noble Truths, Buddha
The other night I gathered with a group of friends for a monthly movie night. After a few rounds of voting on our film of choice (everybody brought a favorite to share), the group settled on Donnie Darko-The Director's Cut. The film, originally released a month after the Sept 11 attacks, was re-released in a longer version in 2004 debuting at the Seattle International Film Festival. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal in one of his earliest roles, I'd remembered The Stranger singing the movie's praises, but had never seen it. At the time the title disturbed me; the film looked dark. I thought the main character was a drug dealer. But as we hit the play button, and the group settled in for a viewing, the story captured my imagination, its themes as relevant today as a decade ago.
I grew up in a Catholic household in a traditional two parent family. My father, a former builder and real estate agent, worked as a building inspector for the city of Cleveland the last 15 years of his professional life. My mother, a homemaker, volunteered in my school, the church and our community. Both of my parents encouraged me to follow the rules and respect authority figures, ranging from the police to the priests and nuns at my Catholic grade school. Fortunately my high school and college education with the Jesuit priests, along with assorted like-minded lay teachers, inculcated in me a healthy dose of skepticism when the subject of authority arose. "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see," a Benjamin Franklin adage, found its way to my impressionable ears.
Donnie Darko explores the notion of time travel and fate. A teenager under the care of a psychiatrist begins seeing disturbing visions of the end of the world. He is visited by Frank, a menacing supernatural creature in a rabbit suit, who calls him out of his bedroom one night. That evening a jet engine crashes through the roof of his family's house and into Donnie's bedroom.
From then on Donnie is on a course of no return, wrestling with his beliefs, challenging his parents and teachers, asking questions about love, fear, and death. He struggles with the notion of the existence of God. By film's end he chooses a brave course of action that saves those he loves at a great cost.
The film is subversive in its quest to reveal the underside of conventional life in the comfort-laden splendor of American suburbia. None of us are safe from these overriding questions of choosing love over fear, truth over hypocrisy, or selflessness over selfishness.
The tragedy of 9/11 brought these issues to the fore as each of us grappled with how to move forward as a community and a nation. Many of us found comfort in a church or synagogue. Others sought security in the arms of a family member, lover or spouse. For a short while we grew gentler and more patient with one another. And as a country we looked for common ground to reassure ourselves in a time of deep uncertainty, trauma, and fear.
Ten years have passed since that bright September morning when the U.S. suffered the most deadly attack in its history. In the 9/11 era we've relinquished our civil liberties to airport screeners and tolerate pat downs, surveillance of our phone calls and e-mails, and the continued existence of Guantanamo. Perhaps we're resigned to these infractions on our liberty; we see no other way to combat the threat of terrorist attacks. We're a nation numbed down.
But like the teenage Donnie Darko, psychosis and all, we must continue living the questions. What's truth? What's artifice? What do I need to feel secure? And what's worth sacrificing to maintain that security? Scaremongers and hucksters in business, religion, or government tell us we must depend on their product, their church, or their orthodoxy to feel certain. Don't leave home without it. Don't question authority. Trust me.
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