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Years ago, after watching A DVD of the cult movie Donnie Darko, Andy and I and a couple of friends spent hours discussing what it was really all about. Andy came up with the most plausible explanation … and has since forgotten what that was. To see if any of the theories we’d put forward were correct, we watched an interview with director Richard Kelly on the special features disc.

Donnie Darko

The interview left us none the wiser, with Richard Kelly seeming to suggest that he wasn’t sure himself. When the interview was over, I turned to the others, miffed, and said, ‘How the hell can he not know? He made the damn film.’

Warning: The next section contains potential spoilers for the movie, All of Us Strangers.

After watching All of Us Strangers the other night, Andy and I talked about our interpretation of it. I wondered if Andrew Scott’s character, Adam, had been dead all along, killed in a fire in his London Tower block. Andy didn’t go along with this theory. But I saw breadcrumbs throughout the movie – from the opening scenes where the tower block Adam lives in is evacuated after a false fire alarm; a discussion Adam has with Harry musing that one of the times when the fire alarm goes off it will be real; Adam feeling uncomfortably hot for no obvious reason; Adam waking up to see flashing blue lights reflected in his window; Adam suddenly coughing as though he’s choking while on the Tube (smoke inhalation?). It seems obvious, and yet when someone asked director Andrew Haigh if Adam died when his tower block burned down, he was initially surprised by the suggestion, before also remarking he quite liked that idea after thinking about it for a while. To me the clues were spread throughout the film. If that was the case, they were put there subconsciously by the director.

All of Us Strangers

Recently, I read Samantha Harvey’s unique Booker prizewinning novel Orbital, a slender book with a Universe-sized theme. I could only manage twenty pages at a sitting as there is so much to absorb in her sublime words. When I finished the book, I turned to Andy, who’d already read it, and said, ‘So, it was partly about God and religion, that when you look at the world through the eyes of astronauts, it is possible to see how primitive civilisations could mistakenly view them as gods … God.’ (Think Erich von Däniken and Chariot of the Gods.) Andy didn’t get this at all from the book, and I haven’t seen mention of it anywhere else, even though to me there are references throughout the novel that fit neatly into this interpretation.

Orbital

Last year, I acted as one of the beta readers (someone who test reads an unpublished manuscript and then gives creative feedback to the author) for a writer friend’s novel. When I sent my feedback, I included my take on what one part of the novel’s complex and intriguing plot was about. Turned out, I was wrong. But R, the author, liked my interpretation and saw how, from events that occurred in the novel, the theory was plausible .

After completing the second (maybe third) draft of a book I’ve written, I passed it to Andy to perform her role as an alpha reader (someone, possibly a partner, who reads through an early draft of a manuscript and gives feedback). The book is about a man who, solely to attend the funeral of his estranged father, reluctantly returns to the small Scottish island he fled from twenty years earlier. Shortly after arriving, he finds himself drawn into a feud between locals and a mysterious cult accused of devil worship. There are, hopefully, unexpected revelations peppered throughout the plot, including right up to the last paragraph. When Andy finished reading it, she remarked, ‘Ah, so they were (the next part of her question is redacted)?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied.
‘What do you mean you don’t know?’ Andy laughed. ‘You wrote it.’
‘I know,’ I shrugged, unable to explain further.
It is true. There is an aspect of the story I don’t know the answer to myself, not for certain. It’s just the way it evolved as I wrote it.

After all these years, I finally got it. I understood why Richard Kelly was so coy when asked about Donnie Darko. Sometimes the writing takes over, as though you’re not in control of what happens, or even able to fully understand the meaning behind certain occurrences. It is a weird and also wonderful part of the writing process.

Ultimately, interpretation lies in the eye of the reader or viewer. If that varies from person to person, it doesn’t really matter so long as they get something out of it.

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Jack Montgomery

Jack is an author, travel writer, photographer, and a Slow Travel consultant who has been writing professionally for twenty years. Follow Jack on Facebook for information about his writing, travel tips, photographs, and tales of life in a tiny rural village in Somerset.

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Welcome to my Canvas

Some of the items on this site won’t be to everyone’s liking, I get that. Basically this is my place, my wee studio to mess around in – experimenting with words and thoughts. I’ll be chuffed if you enjoy it, but if you don’t, c’est la vie. As a friend used to tell me “it would be a boring life if we all thought the same.”

Jack Montgomery
A wine press,
On a farm at the end of the dirt track,
The Setúbal Peninsula,
Portugal
E: jack@buzztrips.co.uk