What Is Cellar Door In Donnie Darko

It was the first feature length film from director and writer james richard kelly.

What is cellar door in donnie darko.

In fantasy a mundane door can become a portal to another world as with the wardrobe of the lion the witch and the wardrobe or the rabbit hole of alice in wonderland. The words cellar door are written on the chalkboard in karen pomeroy s classroom. Grandma death the ex nun who wrote the time travel book donated by the professor to donnie. Donnie sees his destiny when ariel gretchen joins his spirit and when he has sex with her at midnight he sees a portal cellar door and realizes his destiny by going to roberta sparrow s house.

It was written in the 1903 cyrus lauron hooper novel gee boy that an italian savant believed that cellar door was the most beautiful combination of english sounds in 1920 h l. Donnie darko quotes quotable quote this famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the english language of all the endless combinations of words in all of history that cellar door is the most beautiful. The phenomenon of cellar door being regarded as euphonious appears to have begun in the very early twentieth century first attested in the 1903 novel gee boy by the shakespeare scholar cyrus lauron hooper. This idea is utilized in the 2001 film donnie darko where the phrase cellar door is discussed in one scene and an actual cellar door figures into the plot in a later scene.

Donnie darko premiered at the sundance film festival in january 2001 eight months before the september 11 terrorist attacks. Nunberg further suggests the semantics of cellar door are not actually irrelevant.