Donnie Darko question

[Onryou]

Could someone please explain to me the whole "Frank" thing? Everything else made sense when the movie was all said and done but maybe i just missed soemthing with him. It seemed like he was just a minor player in the end when he seemed like so much more through the rest of the movie...

[ramennoodles]

i think he was just a hallucination(sp?) and it was just to make people try and came up with theories about what he is, i am not so much confused by frank but how frank ties in in real life.

did that make any sense?

[Onryou]

I understand that through the first 3/4 of the film he was just a hallucination. But in the end, at and after the halloween party he was a real person. Did Donnie know this real frank?

I don't want to get out the time flow arguements because they tend to make my ears bleed :p

Frank lead Donnie down the path toward enlightenment but does that mean he was already at that final point? He had the eye injury that DOnnie gave him, in the theatre, long before he actually received it on halloween night?

somehow I do'nt think what i just typed makes much cohesive sense...

[Onryou]

Another thought just came to me...

"What if you can go back in time, and take away all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better." - Gretchen

This is one of the most poignant quotes from the whole movie. It may even be the summary point of the whole movie. The only problem is, strictly in the context of the film; even though all the pain and darkness that was wrought through the action was undone, so too was the good. What will happen to Gretchen now? And what about Roberta Sparrow? or even Jim Cunningham (Patrick Swayze)?

Guess this brings up deeper questions then "who is frank, really?" Huh?

[Ov3rmind]

Frank is a little easier to understand if you watch the deleted scenes. He's essentially a disciple sent by God to make Donnie realize that he wont die alone. Good movie, I always notice something new every time I watch it.

[Onryou]

found a pretty good explaination of the timeline of the film, plus a very well thought out answer to my original question.

http://www.mjyoung.net/time/darko.html