There's something we love about the ambiguous; after all, a quick Google search shows people still hotly debating the ending of "The Sopranos." When done well, ambiguity can be the greatest ending of all, as this thoughtful analysis of one film demonstrates.
"Donnie Darko" is a gorgeous, utterly baffling (at least upon my first teenage viewing) whirlwind of a film that has acquired quite a cult following and wide respect. While on one level, it's simply great storytelling, what really fuels the enduring fascination is how exactingly it was made to be equivocal. Whereas anything can be ill-defined through loose craft or exclusion of information, this is beautiful, precisely engineered nebulosity, which is no small feat. The power of this is that it draws the viewer in with the stunning clarity of its execution, but still leaves the interpretive door so wide open that almost anyone can connect with the story and empathize with the characters, empathy being a covert theme of the film. The film's interpretations range from trouble teen on the verge of psychosis to modern-day Christ figure, as this great video essay from Screen Prism shows the final beauty is that despite it never revealing a definitive interpretation, it still strongly reinforces very human themes, and that's why we still laud it and debate it 15 years later: though we're not sure what exactly we connected with, we know the connection is strong. It's a perfect example of why ambiguity in storytelling can be so powerful.
