Introduction
First of all, it is necessary to mention, that the matters of freedom and determinism had been viewed by lots of philosophers, theologists, who are known as determinists. The term determinism states, the all the processes in the world are determined beforehand, and only chosen may see or determine the future. The key opponent of determinism is freedom. It would be necessary to note, that the notion of freedom is much more optimistic, as it states that fate is changeable, and it is possible to avoid lots of troubles.
Analysis of the movie
To clearly define the problem with the relation to the movie, it would be necessary to give a summary of the plot. It starts like any other drama, with a picturesque life of the ordinary teenager Donnie. But soon, strange things start happening in his life. The world is going to end in about twenty-eight days. Donnie Darko knows this as Frank, the human-sized rabbit (his hallucination) told him so. The Darko family lives amid suburban Middlesex. Donnie is troubled. He is schizophrenic, not taking his medication, and up to this point, is inclined to antisocial behavior and sleepwalking. This all changes when a jet engine crashes into their residence. The only problem is that no airliner is missing an engine.
Aside from his mental problems and violent tendencies, Donnie is different from others. He can see beyond the surface and owns the skill to think. That’s why he violently dislikes his teacher Kittie Farmer and her blind esteem of self-help spiritual leader Jim Cunningham, who divides the world into love and fear. As the claimed end of the world nears, Donnie’s condition gets worse. His delusions are more bright, and his actions more unsafe. He is either on the verge of losing his mind or on the breakthrough of some grand epiphany.
The story ends on the morning after the jet engine accident. Donnie is dead and his body is removed from the house as his family mourns. As all the people upon whom Donnie’s actions had an impact (or rather, would have had an impact upon) sit stunned, Frank, with a prototype bunny Halloween mask, subconsciously touches his right eye. Gretchen is alive and rides by on her bicycle.
A lot of themes and symbols may be found in the plot of the movie, but the main one is that knowledge of the future kills. Ancients also believed that, as they animated time, and considered, that it cruelly dislikes, when someone wants to see the future, especially if it were fatal.
As for the issues of freedom and determinism, here we can see, that this division is as right as nothing else. It is explained in the example of Darko’s illusions. Donnie could not get rid of his ugly imaginary friend Frank, who followed him everywhere, and became the slave of Frank’s will (some may argue that the will was not Frank’s will, but Donnie’s as Frank was just the result of Donnie’s deceased imagination).
It is also necessary to highlight, that the principle of free will has religious, ethical, and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an invincible divinity does not state its power over personality will and choices. In ethics, it may imply that persons can be held morally accountable for their actions. In the scientific realm, it may imply that the actions of the body, comprising the brain and the mind, are not wholly unwavering by corporeal causality. The matter of free will has been a central issue since the origin of philosophical thought.
The fact is there is genuine freedom in the world. When we view it from the exterior, it takes the form of quantum-mechanical randomness; when we observe it from inside, we call it our free will. We know that the reason why our behavior is irregular from the outside is that we have eventual freedom of choice. This freedom is the very heart of our individualities, the treasure of our lives. It is given us as the first element of the world we come into.
Logically, the notion of free will is principal, impractical to derive or to explain from something else. The concept of obligation, comprising the concept of natural law, is plagiaristic.
Conclusion
In the twentieth century, the logical worldview has experienced a radical change. It has twisted out that subatomic physics can not be realized within the frames of the Naive Realism of nineteenth-century scientists. The theory of Relativity and, particularly, Quantum Mechanics require that our worldview be grounded on critical attitude, according to which all our theories and psychological images of the world are only tools to arrange and predict our skill.