13 Phones of Halloween #10

.

For a movie set in the 1980s phones actually don't show up in Donnie Darko - which came out on this day 13 years ago! - very much. Not until the end, where they play a vital role, thanks to a pair of missed connections.

Donnie's therapist Dr. Thurman (Katharine Ross) tries to contact his mother Rose (Mary McDonnell), saying its urgent, immediately following a disturbing hypno-session with Donnie...

... (no it's not the one where he molests himself in front of her but you knew I'd have to get that gif in here somehow)... but Rose isn't in town, she had to go to Los Angeles with Sparkle Motion for the championships, lest someone doubt her commitment.

One scene later we see Rose trying to get a hold of Donnie at home from the airport in Los Angeles. She leaves her flight information on the machine, which Donnie doesn't notice since he's all up on Gretchen at the moment...

I could go on about how all of these missed connections are threaded together Fate-wise since Donnie Darko's all about the choices each and every character makes choosing that one single path to their destination, to Rose and Samantha being on the plane...

... in the false dimension where the engine falls off...

... and kills Donnie in the real dimension, all that jazz, but really I just wanna single out Mary McDonnell's performance on that fateful missed phone call...

... because as ever she's a phenomenal actress and she deserves credit whenever you can toss it her way. What she does with the role of Rose is tremendous and the film wouldn't work if she weren't there putting all her brittle longing and heart into it. Cheers to Rose, man. What a nice lady.

PS Where the hell are you, Richard Kelly?