[colour] blue: some of the connotations of the colour blue are loneliness, sadness, grief, solitude, masculinity and peace. Loneliness is quite prominent throughout the movie as Donnie struggles with his mental health and experiences typical teen angst. It also comes into play when Donnie treats Frank as his friend, not unlike when children make up imaginary people when they’re lonely.
[colour] black: black has obvious connotations of darkness, death, the night and the unknown. Nighttime is probably the most obvious explanation for the colour’s use here as Donnie only meets with Frank at night and he sleepwalks quite often. Some of the major incidents in the film - the fire, Halloween, the cinema, vandalising the school - happen at night. Using black as a colour to represent the unknown is also relevant to the movie as a lot of the film is a mystery and it’s not clear why everything happens, the plot is quit ambiguous.
[colour] both: having Frank’s head in light blue and the background in black, making sure the head stands out and is the main focal point of the poster, almost makes it looks like Frank is sticking his head out of the shadows which is kind of what it feels like in the movie. This morally grey character comes out of the nowhere in the middle of the night, for seemingly no reason.
[images] clouds: in Frank’s eyes, you can see an image of the clouds from the end of the movie. Having one of the last scenes of the film as his eyes is foreshadowing firstly, the end of the film where Donnie has to sacrifice himself but also that Frank is an all-knowing character almost acting as a mentor and guiding him through ‘the end of the world’.
[images] american flag: stretching over Frank’s left and right ears is the American flag. There’s not a great deal of significance of this besides the general patriotism of Kitty, the teacher and the town’s motivation speaker, Jim Cunningham. At the Darko family dinner table scene, there is some talk of politics but it doesn’t oversee the whole movie.
[images] numbers: along the length of Frank’s left ear, you can see the numbers that appeared on Donnie’s arm at the start of the movie, reading how much time until the end of the world - 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, 12 seconds. Again, the significance of these numbers on Frank’s ear is that he can foretell the future and see the end of the world.
[images] overview: at first glance, the only image on the poster is Frank’s head, but at a closer look you can see various symbols and characters from the film built into his composition. This once again reiterates my point of Frank being an omniscient being who knows all. The chaos of all of these different symbols and characters with different facial expressions crammed into his head is reminiscent of the movie’s ambiguous ending and how it’s not completely clear what happens to the characters or why the plane had to crash into Donnie’s room and crush him to death to see the world.
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