Category Archives: Mythology

Includes philosophy, science, religion, physics, metaphysics, and all kinds of speculative wankery.


Descent into Post-modernism

In general, postmodern writing involves a blurring of boundaries.

I’ve been quiet but I haven’t been idle. This post is going to be more like a personal agenda so that I can track stuff without getting utterly lost. The point is I have a point, or at least trying to chase it.

This “post-modern” thing is fascinating, but also elusive. The real question is to get a grasp of at least what it does mean on a very general, but shareable, level. I had ideas but I wasn’t sure they were correct and fitting, and they were also too blurred to offer a good grasp.

In the end I discovered TvTropes and that offered a concise, pragmatic guide (especially how it applies to the variety of the media of today). Many of my ideas were proved sound and could be better positioned.

This kind of journey is across mediums. I’ve been moving through TV series, movies, games, anime, books and more. There’s a reason and it is relevant. A few months ago I was looking into Jonathan Lethem after watching a documentary and this excerpt from the wikipedia is fitting:

Nowadays, I’ve come to feel that talking about categories, about ‘high’ and ‘low’, about genre and their boundaries and the blurring of those boundaries, all consists only of an elaborate way to avoid actually discussing what moves and interests me about books—my own, and others’.

A lot of what I like is innately postmodern, so discovering what the term refers to is like discovering what’s the rule I answer to. It is so wide not because empty of value so that you can fit in whatever you want. The patterns are specific, and the patterns are what interests me.

This habit of “tracing” stuff through the wikipedia or TvTropes is typical of the superficial glance at “everything”, but that superficiality isn’t the important trait. The important trait is to recognize patterns that link the most disparate stuff. For example I’m watching Fringe. A TV series I recommend, very similar to X-Files yet better on certain aspects. It sits well with the postmodern angle as it plays quite blatantly with perception and “frames” (two things that are at the core of what I look for in Post-modernism). Its mythology is extremely straightforward and that’s not what draws my attention the most. What’s in the show is quite blatant and often clumsy, but there’s an extremely fascinating “dark side of the moon”, of ideas suggested but not played. So I watch it with interest more for those ideas suggested but not played with directly. What is not shown. That part of the mythology that is not canon.

So looking at the frames of things, not the details within. The relationships between the frames, relative positioning. You recognize patterns that maybe aren’t “true” (like the ideas that a Fringe episode may suggest you, but that aren’t really part of the plot in any explicit way) but that help move you closer. An idea close to another trope, the Death Of The Author in its more extreme and postmodern definition:

Just because you wrote it, what makes you think you have the slightest idea what it’s about?

Take a little leap of faith, and it leads to Not in Heaven. It’s our right and even duty to take up the thing and understand or interpret it our own way.

This summer I have enjoyed quite a bit going through Final Fantasy XIII’s plot. It’s quite awesome (despite the actual game being rather subpar) and filled to the brim with those kinds of reveals and reversals I love. I’m not even sure I “read” the story the same as everyone else. For example Vanille is the typical FF airhead character. Utterly naive, clueless, cutesy, high-pitched voice to the point of annoyance. Not much clothes on her because she has to fit that male-titillating role. Oddly enough, they give her the narrating role, and this introspective voice she gets is already quite a bit different than the Vanille shown in the rest of the game. One wonders why they picked her this kind of role. At this point the plot is about a bunch of disparate characters who don’t know each other and are brought together by events. They are completely clueless about what to do, so they merely stumble along in their blindness. Some 15 hours in there’s one image. A sudden reveal that puts, without even using words, Vanille as a pivot and origin of the whole clusterfuck. Not the hapless victim, but the one who started it all. Suddenly all appearances are overturned, the reveal is enough to change everything literally. That flimsy, naive character was all a ruse, because SHE KNEW. She faked being ignorant like everyone else so that she could manipulate them and push them along as required (it’s a female Kruppe!). The airhead had been the master manipulator, so that the others were doing exactly what they were expected to without even the slight suspicion. This is a rather great pattern that then reiterates and escalates a number of times. I love this stuff because every loop doesn’t just overwrite the previous, it just… expands (like what’s good in Fringe, every season adds a whole new layer that BUILDS on the previous and contains it). In the end Vanille was only a small piece, herself being also manipulated in a much wider picture. Add in dreaming statues, inner worlds, manipulative gods, the end of the world and the deceit of deceits and this becomes pretty much Malazan, the game.

Within there, the themes I’m chasing. Awareness, the perception, manipulation, the distinction between dreams and reality, the possibility of choice, the place of god, revelations, delusions, and so on. Postmodernism is all that, plus the bending of the medium. The fabric itself where you write your pattern of meaning, that can also be twisted and manipulated. Where’s up? Where’s down? (look at Evangelion, episode 26). One of the most representative writer dealing with stuff is obviously Philip K. Dick, especially the latter works (quoting TvTropes):

When the novel begins, Dick opens by saying that it is a fictionalized account of his own encounters with Gnosticism/his schizophrenia, and he is writing the book to get a perspective on himself. The fictionalized version of himself is named Horselover Fat (“Philip” being Greek for “horse lover” and “Dick” being German for “fat”), and the book begins from Fat’s perspective. Over time, however he begins to write in the first person including excerpts from his unpublished Exegesis. Eventually, Dick becomes the main character of the story and he interacts with his own fictionalized clone.

From there I discovered a writer I had never heard of despite he’s been around from quite some time: Christopher Priest. He and David Cronenberg go hand in hand.

I managed to order an used copy of A Dream of Wessex, whose plot is a distillation of what I’m looking into:

A Dream of Wessex can be read as a straightforward story about a group of twentieth-century dreamers who create a consensus virtual-reality future. Once they enter their imaginary world they are unable to remember who they are, or where they are from. On another level, the novel is itself an extended metaphor for the way in which extrapolated futures are created.

The obvious link here is to “Disciple of the Dog”. Bakker is a writer that fits perfectly into all this, including the root of his fantasy work:

If you are the movement of your soul, and the cause of that movement precedes you, then how could you ever call your thoughts your own? How could you be anything other than a slave to the darkness that comes before?

Is a call for “awareness”, it reminds me of DFW commencement speech, also, in its own way, a call for awareness. And here we cross another medium and we arrive to Japanese Visual Novels: Steins;Gate. The Prologue (you could then also watch Fringe, season 3, episode 3 for another of those links).

For some reason Japan is the cradle of Post-modernism applied to popular culture, and the Visual Novels are possibly the most suitable medium for playing with mind screws (and so symbolism) and perception. Another “frame” with so much good stuff that you can lose yourself within (and I will).

Steins;Gate opens its own category. The Visual Novel (30 hours total playtime according to ErogameScape) is finally being translated and imminent. It has the reputation of being absolutely awesome and one of the best Visual Novels ever made. The Drama CDs are also being translated (γ, α, β, about one hour each). The anime was completed a few days ago and received many praises despite adaptations from VNs don’t usually turn for the better. Steins;Gate also exists in the same Verse of another VN, also available in English and considered quite good on its own: Chaos;Head (20 hours playtime). If you are a completist like me you’ll want to go through the whole thing even if these stories are unrelated.

“Mind Screw” is basically synonymous of Visual Novel, so there are a number of more titles, thankfully available in English through fan-made translations, that are worth looking into. In the end an handful of titles dominate the genre. One is the Nasuverse. Specifically the most known title (among all VNs) is Fate/Stay Night (53 hours playtime), preceded by Tsukihime (35 hours playtime). Tsukihime is interesting in its own right, especially a kind of sequel, Kagetsu Tohya (25 hours playtime), that is a crazy dream sequence that loops over and over till you are able to find a way to escape it. I love just looking at the flowcharts. Even here, for the complete journey beside Tsukihime, sequel, fan disk, and Fate/Stay Night (they tell me to stay away from the anime adaptations of all these), there’s also a series of seven anime movies, considered to be quite excellent. Kara no Kyōkai, being actually the first piece of the three-parts creation and worthy in its own right: “While considered by many to be the prototype of Tsukihime, it is much, MUCH more complex, sometimes to the point of being Mind Screw.”

Between that and Chaos;Head (and later on this post, Lain), I’m also reminded of this (director: Sion Sono).

Another chunk of relevant Visual Novels is represented by another writer, Romeo Tanaka. Whose only two main works are available in english: Yume Miru Kusuri (15 hours playtime) (whose subtitle fits well with the theme: “A Drug That Makes You Dream”), and especially CROSS†CHANNEL (25 hours playtime). The latter, along with another title, Ever17: The Out of Infinity (30 hours playtime), being the signature “mind screws”.

What’s left? Umineko. An 8-parts Visual Novel (about 10 hours every episode, so a total of 80 hours, the script is HUGE) that thrives on mystery and speculation. A kind of detective story heavy on supernatural elements. This got quite a big following and only the last chapter is waiting an english translation. As a whole is one of the hugest works (it passes easily the million in wordcount), “epic” in its own right. And finally Muv-Luv. Considered the greatest of the VNs along with (the ancient) YU-NO (44 hours playtime) (with another insane flowchart and also with an imminent english translation). Muv-Luv being a kind of special case as it is a product of “genre shift”. Divided into three parts (consider 30 hours for the first two, and 40 for the last) where only the last is where it builds its reputation, and going from harem comedy to hardcore mecha. The trope “Anyone Can Die” is a synonymous of Muv-Luv. This, and other stuff, is being translated by the excellent Ixrec (where you can also find other very good reviews). Other good reviews I found on The Escapist. Especially Deskimus Prime and NeutralDrow (check their posts for more).

There’s another mecha series with an high reputation that’s still untranslated (it would be another huge effort) and that even has some insane gameplay included. This pretty much closes the chapter “Visual Novel”. Playing five minutes of Chaos;Head would give a very good idea why these all righteously belong in Post-modernism.

Stepping slightly aside, I’m now watching Serial Experiments Lain. A Japanese anime that again fits perfectly, including stuff I previously mentioned on the blog, from the wikipedia:

Likewise, the series’ Deus ex machina lies in the conjunction of the Schumann resonance and Jung’s collective unconscious (the authors chose this term over Kabbalah and Akashic Record).

Enough keywords in there to find more stuff and more interesting links. The anime is packed with symbolic meaning and it will be fun to parse (and to watch alongside Fringe).

This reminds me I’ve just ordered Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, which also has a companion book, like The Gravity’s Rainbow (that I own already). Also sitting, if not leading, righteously in the Post-modern genre.

Another book to look into is Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut:

Breakfast is a personalized account of the phrase “perfect paranoia is perfect awareness.” Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover becomes obsessed with the work of sci-fi writer Kilgore Trout, eventually spiraling into acute eruptions of anxiety when he believes that he is the sole human combating a world of reificated humanoids. Black satire at the peak of its powers.

Or TvTropes:

It’s taken to it’s logical extreme in Breakfast Of Champions, in which the author, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., appears at the end of the book, is attacked by a dog from a previous novel and apologizes to one of the two main characters for making his life so miserable.

But I was talking about anime and forgot to mention the pinnacle of Kabbalah and Post-modernism. Not Evangelion (that is so blatant that it’s implicit in the list, like Infinite Jest) but The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s so sublime (and postmodern) that I refuse to spoil. This just has to be experienced. Trying to find a correct watch-order for the anime is already an impossible task (all episodes are “scrambled” chronologically, and then across two series). And it goes to extremes (Endless Eight) that are utterly unbelievable and masochist.

Then, maybe, watch π (the guy best known for Black Swan). I haven’t yet seen The Fountain, but they are closely related. In a certain way The Tree of Life too, but of that I already written on the blog.

I was forgetting, I found Christopher Priest because Adam Roberts reviewed his recent book (whose link to ergodic literature is another fascinating discovery).

And to cap this journey, another movie: Synecdoche, New York.

For thousands of years, fiction made no room for characters who changed. Men felt the need for an explanation of their baffling existence, created gods, and projected onto them the solutions for their enigmas. These gods of course had to be immutable, for they stood above the foibles of men

Rogert Ebert thinks it’s the best movie of the last ten years. It’s Charlie Kaufman directorial debut and he’s known for penning the scripts of some utterly crazy (and awesome) works, like: “Being John Malkovich”, “Adaptation” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (these all movies being great). Working often with Spike Jonze, but also Michel Gondry, whose The Science of Sleep deserves to be on this list (including the Dream Argument).

Last namedrop is Richard Linklater, probably best known for Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly”, but it’s Ebert review of Waking Life that draws my attention.

To not have the answers is expected. To not ask questions is a crime against your own mind.

This is The Malazan Book of the Fallen

After I wrapped up “The Curse of the Mistwraith” I went back to read “Midnight Tides”. Brew green tea, sit down. Read ten paragraphs or so, then… think for the following hour and half without reading another line.

That’s what it does to me. More and more characters give voice to my own thoughts and feelings. Blurring, because I can’t say anymore if I developed a line of thought on my own, or sparked by something I read. Often I find characters say something I thought a moment before, and often I go to reread some old page and find again some thought I believed my own.

Seren longed to hold on to that long view. She desperately sought out the calm wisdom it promised, the peace that belonged to an extended perspective. With sufficient distance, even a range of mountains could look flat, the valleys between each peak unseen. In the same manner, lives and deaths, mortality’s peaks and valleys, could be levelled. Thinking in this way, she felt less inclined to panic.

From Deadhouse Gates:

What see you in the horizon’s bruised smear
That cannot be blotted out
By your raised hand?

Interior and exterior worlds – microcosm/macrocosm

From Midnight Tides. Thematically linked to “The Tree of Life” and symbolic spaces (see second paragraph, it can’t be more explicit than that):

Drawn to the shoreline, as if among the host of unwritten truths in a mortal soul could be found a recognition of what it meant to stand on land’s edge, staring out into the depthless unknown that was the sea. The yielding sand and stones beneath one’s feet whispered uncertainty, rasped promises of dissolution and erosion of all that was once solid.

In the world could be assembled all the manifest symbols to reflect the human spirit, and in the subsequent dialogue was found all meaning, every hue and every flavour, rising in legion before the eyes. Leaving to the witness the decision of choosing recognition or choosing denial.

Udinaas sat on a half-buried tree trunk with the sweeping surf clawing at his moccasins. He was not blind and there was no hope for denial. He saw the sea for what it was, the dissolved memories of the past witnessed in the present and fertile fuel for the future, the very face of time. He saw the tides in their immutable susurration, the vast swish like blood from the cold heart moon, a beat of time measured and therefore measurable. Tides one could not hope to hold back.

[…]

He sat huddled in his exhaustion, gaze focused on the distant breakers of the reef, the rolling white ribbon that came again and again in heartbeat rhythm, and from all sides rushed in waves of meaning. In the grey, heavy sky. In the clarion cries of the gulls. In the misty rain carried by the moaning wind. The uncertain sands trickling away beneath his soaked moccasins. Endings and beginnings, the edge of the knowable world.

The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick

I watched this movie today (I guess I make a special case, going from writing about Ultraman to this). I was expecting something dense and complexly layered, instead I saw a surprisingly simple movie. Beside the (legitimate and laudable) pretentiousness of these “artistic” movies there’s nothing that it’s cryptic or hard to figure out here. What it wants to say is clear and straightforward, easily interpreted by everyone, as long one doesn’t fall asleep and lets the movie lead and set the flow. It’s a movie that rewards a humble, trusting approach.

Long movie, two hours and half, without a linear narrative or even a traditional use of language. That’s why it can still be a challenge to watch. The scenes are disconnected, like a collection of pictures, a life’s album, linked together by their symbolic theme. But this association proceeds linearly, so easy to grasp. Everything that doesn’t belong to its meaning is taken out of the picture, so one isn’t misdirected toward details and detours. It tells the story of a family, seen always in retrospection. It gave me a similar feel of the last episode of LOST, in particular that final serenity and tranquility while looking back at the dramatic scenes that precede and alternate with those inside the church. Also in this movie every small slice of life scene alternates with pictures and music of “the birth and death of the universe”, from cells to galaxies. Think of the flippant, hallucinated finale of 2001: A Space Odissey, and stretch it along a whole movie. A story of a family that alternates with sequences with dinosaurs made in CG. It makes it work, and makes very simple to understand why these sequences are present and what they want to represent. A movie filled with clarity in spite of this attempt to “embrace” everything. The meaning of life within the entire universe.

It is oddly empty of passions. There are some of these slices of life that show the drama of life, but this drama is seen from a quiet and calm point of view. It tries to underline this duality represented by “the father’s way” and “the mother’s way” (as you can see in official site), but I think the movie itself, maybe Malick himself, is rooted in the Mother’s way. It’s a movie where grace and elegance are the dominating tones.

It’s also a movie unified by compassion. It has been defined as a “prayer” more than a movie, and it is a fitting description. The pieces that narrate the story of the family are not linear. They are memories re-discovered. Often images without dialogue and just a symbolic value. Every object is filled with meaning, like poetry. Words spoken alternate with words whispered, becoming thoughts. Contemporary (to the scene) or contemplative (from a future self, looking back) joined in dialogue. There are three points of view alternating: the mother, the father, and one of the sons (why it’s only one should be obvious). All three looking back at their life, trying to understand, grasping for meaning and sense. Trying to fix those moment, understand what they are/were. Why. How they happened. Three points of view and three voices that look back at their whole life.

It’s filled with compassion because this look back is completely empty of guilt or blame. Guilt and blame are both part of the story as it is natural, but not in the form of judgement. Neither of the three are judged by the other two. But they are also not avoided, they are observed and understood. Forgiven and embraced.

I could say that this is an “epic” movie in every sense. And from what I wrote you could see that it’s very close to what I think Erikson’s series also tried to do. These are kindred works, that fully embrace and fulfill what art can and should be.

They try to find meaning in life both in the most specific and universal way. Eye-openers. Without bias and prejudices. In being what they are they also become prayers. And prayers that have absolutely nothing to do with cults or religious aspects. They are prayers that aren’t intended for a selected group, and that do not leave out anyone.

P.S.
Reading some comments on the forums. See for example this one and make the connection to LOST finale:

I can’t put it into words. Not sure I get the beach scene near the end, except it felt like everyone had died and were meeting eachother in the afterlife, some after a long time, some after a short;

Some other comments collected:

What an extraordinary movie. Such a touching, gorgeous look at, heck, everything. I don’t have much to say right now, maybe later, but ‘The Tree of Life’ shook me to my foundation.

It is an absolute masterpiece, though anyone expecting a “conventional” movie in three acts will be quite shocked, of course. Anyone familiar with Malick should know what to expect.

It felt like going to hear a symphony performed; if you can let it wash over you and its performed well enough, all the meaning and beauty you’re looking for will come welling up from inside, not from someone standing on the stage informing us what the composer wants us to feel.

Even if you get nothing out of the film this way (and no doubt thats the case for some), this is absolutely one of the greatest works in cinematography that I’ve ever seen, and the acting is astonishingly good.

Just came out from seeing Tree of Life, and it was an amazing experience and just flat out breathtaking.

the camera work felt like seeing the world through the eyes of a child. The way the camera moved and interacted with the environment it had such a wondrous gaze, always looking up, curiously watching people and it shows how we learn about life like a child, with a vague understanding of life around us.

This movie is a large portion science/philosophical fiction but it intentionally avoids science, and completely revels in pure subjective visual knowledge.

These aren’t commercial “blurbs”, there are just spontaneous comments from those who watched the movie.

And something from Ebert:

In my mind there has always been this conceptual time travel, in which the universe has been in existence for untold aeons, and then a speck appeared that was Earth, and on that speck evolved life, and among those specks of life were you and me. In the span of the universe, we inhabit an unimaginably small space and time, and yet we think we are so important. It is restful sometimes to pull back and change the scale, to be grateful that we have minds that can begin to understand who we are, and where are in the vastness.

Donnie Darko explained

I’m a bit late watching this movie, but here it is (if you haven’t watched this sci-fi movie you’ll have no idea of what I’m talking about).

The movie can only be understood through the online material. Here’s a starting point:

Like life, and much of Wolfe’s work, Donnie Darko can only be seen forward, but only understood looking backwards.

That said, the semi-official FAQ doesn’t really explain everything, and about those parts that don’t make sense it simply states: “this is open to interpretation”. Nope. It’s open to interpretation because you didn’t get it. Heh.

The real explanation comes from here.

This is my own paraphrase. EVERYTHING makes sense, is consistent, explained and never forced. There isn’t anything ambiguous.

First thing: the real theme of the movie is the demonstration of the existence of god. Which is the element that ties together all the plot threads.

Postulate: the space-time is an entity trying to preserve itself the same as all organisms do. It can happen that the system has a crisis, and the entity has means to counter and solve this crisis, the same way an human body develops antibodies and can heal wounds. Trying to preserve itself.

The space/time anomaly in the movie, generating the Tangent Timeline, is not caused by someone, or the random actions of someone, or weird super-powers. It is not due to something related to the characters in the movie. It is simply a natural phenomenon, like the fall of a meteorite. So the characters in the movies aren’t “special” by any means. They are simply caught in the anomaly. This is important.

Now. The anomaly is a danger for the integrity of the space/time entity. In the same way it happens to a human body if it doesn’t heal, if the anomaly persists for too long, the space/time sort of “collapses”. So the situation needs to be fixed within a set maximum time-frame.

The anomaly has also an epicenter. All those who are caught near the anomaly become the “antibodies” of the system. This means that ALL characters in the movie are “zombies”, lead by a greater will (space/time). If you could “interview” antibodies they wouldn’t say who they are, what is their function and so on. Because they operate unknowingly, unconsciously. They are simply manipulated. Unaware. They have illusion of life and conscience, but they can’t choose or really live.

This creates two groups. From a side, everyone in the village, the manipulated, zombie ones. From the other, our hero, Donnie Darko.

There’s one main difference. The manipulated ones have no real “conscience”, as they are manipulated, and have no special powers. While Donnie Darko has special powers (that allow him to fix the time anomaly and “save the world”) but also has the freedom of choice. This means that the manipulated ones, being just puppets, are lead by an all-knowing hand. So an hand who knows how to fix things. While Donnie Darko has conscience, but no knowledge.

So. Manipulated ones, who know how, but don’t have the power to. And Donnie Darko, who has the power to, but doesn’t know how.

The WHOLE movie is about (subject) the manipulated ones trying to induce Donnie Darko to do his task. A tutorial. They will try to make Donnie Darko do it. Force to do it. Induce.

Most of the plot in the movie is pure, awesome Deus ex machina revealed. Making all sort of things happen just to induce Donnie to do something.

For example: why the old crazy woman goes every day to check her letter box? Common answer: because she knows something, so she goes to check if a letter about that something arrives.

Nope. That woman is a zombie like everyone else. She checks the letter box to induce another character to say “someone should write her”, to then induce Donnie Darko to do it. This letter being sent would then, at the end of the movie, induce the old woman to find the letter, and start to read it in the middle of the road. Who consequently induces a car to arrive, dodge the woman in the middle of the road and kill Donnie’s own girl.

Why Donnie’s girl dies? To induce, once again, to make him do his task. Death and life of zombies don’t matter. What matters is simply persuade Donnie. Push him to “do the right thing”. That is: using his powers to fix the anomaly and save the world (so preserving the time/space self-preserving entity).

This introduces the theme of god. Donnie can see the future movement of people (the translucent tentacle coming out the chest). So he speaks with his teacher. Meaning: if I can see the future, then it means things are already determined before they happen. So this means that there is god, as someone who makes those choices and sets the plan. BUT. If, I, Donnie Darko can see where they will go, so having the power to *change* it, then who am I? What happens if I don’t do what they tell me (save the world)?

Teacher reply: I cannot answer because… (stupid reason). Of course he cannot. This is a scene about Donnie Darko (god’s tool) asking god (a manipulated one) what happens if he doesn’t do what the god asked him to do. Of course god can’t answer that. Taboo.

So, again, the movie is about Donnie Darko’s internal conflict: do I do it, or not? Do I fulfill my role or not?

In the scenes with the psychologist, Donnie says he:
1- Knows there’s time limit, so that things aren’t going to last. Something is going to happen (end of the world).
2- He doesn’t want to die alone.

He knows that when the time is come (the maximum time limit of the Tangent Universe), he will be alone. Him and his vision/tutorial (Frank/god). He will be alone because he knows that the he will have to make the choice alone. To do his task or not.

Added element. Everything that happens in the Tangent Universe isn’t in any way “normal”. It’s simply the realization of Donnie’s own wishes. He finds a girl, fucks her, is handsome, is intelligent, has success with everyone, kicks various asses. He’s basically badass all around, a winner.

NOT because Donnie’s really badass. But because that’s his own wish. He’s got powers. He has the power to realize all he wants. So he actually LOVES this Tangent, unstable Universe. Because everything is great for him.

This also explains a part that is rarely understood. There’s a point where Frank tells him (before he teaches him how to do his task, by opening a wormhole in the movie theatre):
Donnie: “Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?”
Frank: “Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?”

Now, it makes sense asking someone *why* he’s wearing a bunny suit. Because there’s a choice, so a reason. While it doesn’t make sense to ask someone *why* he wears a man suit. Because it’s not a choice. You are born with it.

What Frank implies there is: nope, Donnie. You’re not just a man. You’re past that. You’ve got powers. You can be whatever you want. Why are you still sitting here, pretending to have a normal life (wearing a man suit)?

That’s the transition. Frank is “teaching” Donnie who he really is (god’s tool to do a task, with super-powers and all). In fact shortly after he teaches Donnie how to use his power to fix the anomaly.

Donnie has the choice. To recognize god and complete the task. Or still cling to his pretty but ephemeral life. Denying god.

Why does Donnie Darko die at the end of the movie?

To begin with, he has the choice to live. He could complete the task and still live. The task doesn’t require Donnie’s death. It only requires Donnie to “give back” his pretty ideal life, as that Tangent Universe would be “sealed”, solving the anomaly (god, aka the space/time entity, would cheer at this point).

So why he decides to die? It’s quite simple. As written above, he’s scared to die alone. He’s scared to follow Frank/god’s order and give up at least part of his life. But when he finally accepts the task, he also accepts the existence of god. He seconds the greater will, so he *affirms* it. By doing so, he’s not alone anymore.

He basically passed the test. Accepted god. Hence he transcends his own being. By doing what he does he didn’t *have to* die. But he’s so “past it” that his mortal body, girlfriend, family and EVERYTHING he cared about, are now pretty useless. He’s beyond. He recognized god and doesn’t need anymore a mortal life and body. Stopped to care about the ephemeral stuff of everyday’s life.

OR. He’s betrayed. Used as a tool, induced to believe he’s transcended. Induced to kill himself after his task was complete. Either you believe in god, rewarding people who comply. Or you believe in the space/time entity who operates to simply preserve itself. Kinda selfishly. And once the tool is used, it is tossed away and killed. Making the tool believe that he’s got a much better life.

Either you believe in god as a generous entity. Or you believe in god as a manipulative one. Or just a living entity preserving and caring for itself. Discarding parts of itself, as a process, same as we shed cells during our own life cycle.

The movie obviously stops there. It doesn’t show what happens if the anomaly isn’t fixed (it’s just the space/time entity making people believe that things would go very wrong if the anomaly wasn’t fixed. But maybe only selfishly). It doesn’t show what happens to Donnie’s “life” past death.

Quite a wonderful movie-idea. One of the most ambitious ever.

Problem is, the movie doesn’t provide the tools to understand itself. You have to read stuff online, read the “solution”. I think it would have been much better if these arguments were also real themes *IN* the movie. Instead of outside of it.