A-List: Director's Cuts
By Josh Spiegel
August 26, 2010
Donnie Darko
Donnie Darko is one of those movies you either get or you don’t, apparently. I feel like I hover in the middle; I am fully aware that the film’s writer and director, Richard Kelly, has loads of talent, and much of the film is visually amazing (with a budget of under $5 million, the effects are even more impressive). The casting is surprisingly great, from a young, morose Jake Gyllenhaal to the sly performance from Patrick Swayze. But the film’s mysteries have always seemed a bit superfluous, something Kelly integrated into the story just to make it stand out from other teen films. The director’s cut, which adds 20 minutes to the story, is meant to help answer any questions you may have had about the elliptical plot and mindbending time-travel elements. It’s kind of the same as the Lost epilogue (you remember Lost, right? Sure you do.) that was released this week.
How so? Well, the answers are nice to have, in that the mysteries are now solved. Did we need the answers, though? With regards to Lost, the epilogue answers a lot of questions you may have had about the Dharma Initiative, but those same answers could have been deduced by many of the truly dedicated viewers - and if you want to know about Dharma, you probably knew the answers or could have guessed them. So it goes for the Donnie Darko director’s cut. For the fans, it’s great to see more of this cult film, but even still, was it necessary? This is the problem of most director’s cuts, where it’s cool to see more of a movie you love, but probably not worth shelling out 20 bucks for another copy of a movie you own. Donnie Darko remains Kelly’s best film, but even the young director was unable to leave well enough alone.
Brazil
Terry Gilliam appears to have the worst karma ever. The movies he makes these days are lucky to get made; the recent Arcade Fire concert that was simulcast on the Internet was his last project, and managed to get off the ground almost in spite of his past. His Don Quixote film was such a famous misfire, there was a documentary made of its failure. Though it ended up being released, to some fanfare, his last film, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, was tarnished due to the shocking death of its lead, Heath Ledger. But the bad luck goes all the way back to 1985, and Gilliam’s best film, Brazil. This dystopian vision of the future stars Jonathan Pryce, Robert de Niro, and Bob Hoskins. It’s the story of a cog in a Big Brother-esque machine who tries to break free and run away with his true love; see it, and see it real soon, if you haven’t.
The road to the film’s iconic cult status was very bumpy. Though the film was released in 1985, it was only after many public arguments and Gilliam putting an ad in Variety, literally asking Universal Studios why they weren’t releasing Brazil. The studio tried to release the film in a completely different version; not only did this version have a happy ending, but it was 94 minutes long; the version that was eventually released in major theaters is 132 minutes long and the director’s cut (available on the Criterion Collection’s DVD) is 142 minutes long. What’s so bad about the film? Well, nothing, but like all of Gilliam’s non-Monty Python efforts, it’s hard to market and not a crowd-pleaser. Brazil’s many versions are lovingly recreated on the Criterion DVD, which is worth checking out, as soon as you can. Gilliam’s visual style has never been sharper, even in the truncated versions.
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