by Barry Germansky

 

Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko (2001) proves that genre does not exist outside the enterprise of convenient label-making. Due to the malleability of language, any work of art can fit the description of any genre. Kelly’s film is an angst-ridden, time-traveling sampler of eras past and resurrected, a Rebel Without a Cause for the twenty-first century set during the presidency of Ronald Wilson Reagan. This rebel, like its even wiser older brother, has no shortage of genuine causes.