Requiem for a Dream (2000)

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Still a disturbing, hypnotic portrayal of addiction in a couple of forms.

The movie follows four people in Brooklyn - Sara Goldfarb, her son Harry, his girlfriend Marion, and his closest friend Tyrone. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone are all heroin addicts who have plans to become dealers and attain some self-sufficiency; maybe even get rich. Sara is obsessed with getting on television, in particular on a self-help show focused on looking better. To do so, she begins a ruthless regimen of diet pills that results in erratic behavior and a fracturing of her mind. By tale's end, all four people are horribly broken: Sara is in a psychiatric institution after a complete mental breakdown; Harry has had his arm amputated due to an untreated infection from his intravenous drug use; Marion has taken to completely sexually degrading herself for heroin, and Tyrone has landed in prison.

A simple summary of this story doesn't come close to conveying this film's strengths. This was Darren Aronofsky's second feature-length film, after his brilliant, claustrophobic, black-and-white Pi, about a harried mathematician. With Requiem for a Dream, he took his artistic skills to draw a frantic parallel between addiction to hard drugs and addiction to seemingly innocuous substances like television or diet pills. Unlike most "drug" movies, this one doesn't end with a third-act redemption. The quartet of addicts all hit rock-bottom, at least one of them irrevocably, and that's where the story ends. Even the then-controversial and surprisingly popular Trainspotting - which predated Requiem by a few years - had a more uplifting ending. Aronofsky's film does depict the apparent bliss that addicts feel when they get their fix, be it hard drugs or less obvious means of stimulation, but those euphoric moments are brief and easily forgotten by the film's end.

This description should make it clear that this is not an "entertaining" film. It's never fun to watch people fall into pits of addiction from which they won't or almost certainly won't save themselves. This is why I've only seen this movie twice - the first time in 2002 and then again 18 years later. It's just tough to stomach in many ways. Still, there is an artistry and skill to its execution that I had to see again, and I'm glad that I did. As hard as it is to watch, I have to admire how the story puts TV and diet pill addiction on the same level as heroin addictions, and arguably has worse consequences for its victim, Sara. And the cinematic techniques used to convey the sense of paranoia, panic, and fevered desperation that Sara experiences are nerve-wrackingly effective. As her mental state deteriorates, Sara's faded little apartment living room soon feels every bit as confining as a sweatbox at a Floridian penitentiary. With equal skill, the masterful editing of the movie's visuals and sound gives a sense of the shifts between sobriety and intoxication of various characters. It's often amazingly hypnotic, just on an aesthetic level.

Sara chats with her son, Henry, before things start to go
gradually off the rails for both of them. Just one part of
the grand tragedy is that Henry, himself addicted to heroin,
is the only person who later sees the telltale signs of addiction
in his mother.

There did seem to be a bit of buoyancy missing from the movie, mostly in the first act. Not that it was necessary, or that there needed to be much of it, but I couldn't help wonder if spending just a little more time seeing the characters be happy with one another might not have made their tragedies even more poignant. For the most part, we just see them suffering and fairly tense right from the start, and things only get worse as the story unfolds. Part of this feeling probably comes from the fact that the actors do such excellent work, which should come as no shock when you see the cast: Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a ton of awards for her performance as Sara; Jared Leto and Jennifer Connelly play Harry and Marion, and the surprising but highly capable Marlon Wayans plays Tyrone. These four do such great work that, grim as the tale is, it pulls you along in the hopes that somebody manages to escape their fates.

I've long been a huge fan of Darren Aronofsky, and I like every one of his films, to one degree or another. While I don't have Requiem for a Dream among my favorites of his (those would be The Fountain and The Wrestler), Requiem for a Dream is an excellent film on a dark subject. If you're one who isn't put off by difficult, and depressing subject matter, then I recommend that you check this one out.