D: Darren Aronofsky.  Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Ellen Burstyn, Marlon Wayans, Christopher McDonald, Keith David, Dylan Baker.
 

    “It’ll all work out.”

    That’s the mantra of the four players in Requiem for a Dream, the sophomore feature from Darren Aronofsky, the director of Pi.  All four characters are convinced that their problems and tribulations are only temporary, and that, in true Hollywood form, everything will be resolved in time for a happy ending.

    They are, of course, dead wrong.  Their efforts to break out of their self-inflicted ruts and into individual personal hells make up one of the most engrossing, repulsive, beautiful, brilliant films of 2000.

    At the beginning of the film, Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) are simply two-bit junkies constantly trying to get enough money for the next score for themselves and Harry’s girlfriend Marianne (Jennifer Connelly).  One frequent method of emergency funds is to steal the television that belongs to Harry’s mother Sara (Ellen Burstyn) and sell it to a local pawn dealer.  Like clockwork, Sara simply walks down to the pawnshop, pays the man and gets her television back.  It’s become a way of life.

    To Sara, the television is the most crucial part of her life.  With Harry gone and her husband dead, it’s the only thing that makes her feel less alone.  She spends most of the day watching infomercial king Tappy Timmons (Christopher McDonald) promising his viewers the power of “JUICE” (Join Us In Creating Excellence).  Still, she’s not completely a naïve old woman; when someone sounding like a telemarketer calls, she starts to hang up.  Instead of trying to sell her on a new long-distance phone system, however, he tells her that she’s been picked to be on a game show program.

    Sara quickly informs everyone she knows, mostly other widowed women living in her low-rent Brooklyn building.  Convinced she’s going to be on television any day, she goes on a diet in an attempt to fit into a red dress that she wore for Harry’s high school graduation.  When a simple grapefruit diet fails, she goes to the doctor in order to get weight-control pills.

    Harry and Sara have dreams of their own as well.  Sara wants to open a coffee shop and Harry’s enthusiasm and Tyrone’s street smarts are just enough to get them to start working up the money to buy a big score of heroin to become dealers.  Unfortunately, being junkies themselves, the three of them can’t resist “just a little taste.”

    From there, the four characters become engulfed in their addictions.  Sara’s diet pills contain speed, and she soon finds the refrigerator haunting her daydreams.  The other three work up their way to a bigger score, only to find themselves trapped by Harry’s rapidly decreasing health.  Marianne’s addiction soon overrides any sense of dignity or pride, resulting in her becoming the pawn of a drug dealer.  Thing get worse.  And just when you think things can’t get any worse, Aronofsky pulls you in deeper.  The climax is one of the most unflinchingly intense moments in drug film history.

    What’s admirable about Requiem for a Dream is the way the movie builds to its’ final moments.  It starts slowly, Aronofsky’s creative editing and camerawork put to good use to keep otherwise standard character-development scenes from becoming tiresome.  As time progresses, however, the edits become quicker.  The characters become more intertwined in the editing despite the fact that they become more distant from each other.  By the time the ending shows up, it not only doesn’t seem out of place, it seems perfectly natural.  Unlike Trainspotting, which blows its’ best scenes in several different points throughout the film, Requiem starts out with a little intensity and just keeps piling it on.  Each scene seems more memorable as the last.

    All of the actors are fantastic, and it’s good to see Jennifer Connelly in a part that she can really act in.  Because the three younger actors are close together in the storyline, it’s not a huge surprise that Ellen Burstyn’s performance as Sara has gotten the most acclaim.  It’s a stunning part, and Burstyn doesn’t hold back for a moment.  Even before the diet pills, Sara is an addict of the television.  In a world where her son steals her television, she has no real friends and her husband is dead, it is her only solace.  “It’s a reason to get up in the morning,” she explains.  “It’s a reason to smile.  It makes tomorrow all right.”
 
    Requiem for a Dream is based on the novel by Hubert Selby, Jr. (whose influence on Trainspotting scribe Irvine Welsh is relatively obvious) and some changes have been made to accommodate the translation.  The story, which took place in the 1960’s in the novel, has been updated to the present day, and as a result, some things don’t make a lot of sense.  The politics of race relations in the south and the treatment of shock therapy for psychiatric patients, for example, seem from an earlier era.  Because of this, the film takes on an oddly timeless feel, and may, years from now, work better because of it.

    Complementing Oscar-caliber performances, gorgeous cinematography and editing that, in a perfect world, would’ve won an Oscar over any of the “needed-to-be-trimmed-by-an-hour” sort of drivel that usually ends up getting the gold is a musical score that serves the movie perfectly.  Instead of going for a traditional score or a barrage of pop-hits, Aronofsky wisely went the Fight Club route, bringing on a pulsating techno score by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos Quartet.  The result is one of the most perfect combinations of sound and picture since, well, Pi.

    Requiem for a Dream is brilliant movie that doesn’t just use style in order to overcome the script’s lack of character depth.  All of the characters are well-defined, and what would normally be called cute filmmaking tricks (like the use of split-screen) actually add to the film rather than just make it loud and obnoxious.  It could easily devolve into parody or camp, but Aronofsky treads a steady line and keeps everything serious.  If there’s anyone who can bring new life into the Batman franchise, it’s him.

    Requiem for a Dream is the best movie about drug addiction that I’ve ever seen.  Anyone concerned about the state of American filmmaking should watch it and breathe a long, hard sigh of relief.