dir: Darren Aronofsky
The word on REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is that it is a brilliant film which makes one physically ill. The rumors persist that this was a stomach churning, relentless portrayal of addiction unlike anything ever put on screen before. Furthermore, the film was going out unrated to avoid the NC-17 rating which the film would have gotten supposedly only for the final ten minutes.
There is no denying the emotional power of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. It is the second best film so far this year (see the last review for the first place winner). It is somewhat flawed, but often brilliant. Some of the above is true and some in retrospect seems like hyperbole. In terms of stylistic stomach illness, NATURAL BORN KILLERS still has that award locked down. In terms of harrowing on screen happenings REQUIEM is certainly no SALO, THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM. Nonetheless, the film unnerves largely because it chronicles just how far people will go for their fix. Heroin, cocain, diet pills, food, sex, and television all become the points of obsession for the four main characters of the film. All four characters will push themselves as far as they can both physically and emotionally for their addictions.
As the film opens, the Goldfarbs are practicing the family tradition of the son, Harry (Jared Leto), once again pawning his mother Sara (Ellen Burstyn)’s television for a quick score. He is helped by his best friend and fellow addict Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). Harry spends his high afternoons hanging out with his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), a rich girl on her own with her cocain fix. But, Harry has a plan to make them all rich with some uncut junk. Of course, plans can go wrong. People can go from good to bad to very bad in the urban jungle. The film opens in Summer and ends in Winter with a resolution but no closure.
Everyone has said the film’s final ten minutes is a tour de force which once seen will never be forgotten and also the sole reason for the film’s NC-17 rating. This is true. Once the film is set in “Winter” the relentlessness of the addictions begin to pay their heavy tolls on the characters. REQUIEM shows better than any other film how addictions can become the first and only priority in someone’s life. It is precisely because of this that the film earns every ounce of emotion and pain that are put on the screen.
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is not a perfect film. Jared Leto is not the most convincing addict. The use of the split screens at the film’s opening calls attention to itself. The film takes the first half-hour to find its emotional core. Some of the hallucination scenes are a little overdone. However, for everyone of these negative traits there is something that attributes to the power of cinema: a limo ride with a hearing impaired gangster, drug shopping at a grocery store, a dilated eye, days spent in fast motion, and of course an infected vein.
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is based on the novel by the same name by Hubert Selby, Jr, who also wrote LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. Selby was an heroin addict and the film has a knowledge of how addicts work. I have not read Selby’s novel yet; however, I have just finished reading Malcolm Lowry’s masterpiece UNDER THE VOLCANO, about a British consul drinking his way to oblivion. REQUIEM reminded me of that novel. At one point in Lowry’s text, the Consul ends up in a bar with a lot of bad people. He knows he should leave, but every time he is about to leave, another drink appears. Alcohol has taken the first priority of even self preservation. There are several scene in REQUIEM that matches the power of Lowry’s image. Simply put, I will never forget them.