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Requiem for a Dream
****
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Cornerhouse (Manchester)
Released in the UK by Pathé on January 19, 2001; certificate 18; 101
minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Darren Aaronowsky; produced
by Eric Watson, Palmer West.
Written by Darren Aaronowsky, Hubert Selby Jr.; based on the
novel by Hubert Selby Jr.
Photographed by Matthew Libatique; edited by Jay
Rabinowitz.
CAST.....
Jared Leto..... Harry Goldfarb
Ellen Burstyn..... Sarah Goldfarb
Jennifer Connelly..... Marion Silver
Marlon Wayans..... Tyrone C. Love
Christopher McDonald..... Tappy Tibbons
Louise Lasser..... Ada
Keith David..... Big Tim
Drugs are the quick way out of yearning. Everyday
people crave their morning cigarettes and coffee because they long for a
more alert feeling; maybe they should just get more sleep. And as dreams
get more extreme so do the drugs -- users want to get to the highest plains
they can, ignoring the inevitable consequence, which is that after going
up they must come down. It's like walking a tightrope simply because it's
a way to get somewhere.
The characters in "Requiem for a
Dream" only sincerely smile when they think of their fantasies. Drugs,
they convince themselves, are the best way to reach them. At the centre of
the movie is Harry (Jared Leto), a young man who keeps pawning his mother's
TV set to buy heroin. He and his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) glide
through the dreamy New York summer, high on love and skag, etching perfect
images into their minds, condemning themselves to the delusion that if they
continue shooting up then all of life will be as perfect as these memories.
Harry's best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) is convinced he won't be a junkie
all his life -- he wants to become a dealer, perhaps because he remembers
his proud mother telling him she knew he'd be a success; in flashbacks we
see a promising kid with wide eyes, while the adult Tyrone is an essentially
smart guy too prone to lazing and dreaming -- perhaps he could do something
both prosperous and honest if he could manage to keep his eyes
open.
And then there is Harry's mom Sarah (Ellen Burstyn),
a middle-class Jewish widow who spends her days lounging with other ladies
in front of her apartment block, and her nights all alone, obsessively glued
to monotonous television infomercials. One day she gets a call from the kind
of company whose main slogan is 'You have already won!', convincing her she's
been selected to appear on a TV game show. It's something to latch onto,
and soon Sarah is fantasising about losing weight, looking young again, wearing
the red dress she wore to Harry's first school prize day. She goes to a cheap
doctor who nonchalantly prescribes her diet pills comprised of speed and
valium -- they hep her right up then bring her way low, leaving her frustrated,
strung out, well on the way to becoming the thinnest corpse in the
morgue.
It's fascinating, the way the actors look at the
start of this movie. Jared Leto, so cold-faced and muscular in "Fight Club",
is skinny and tender here, like a teenager happening into trouble. Jennifer
Connelly is as fragile a beauty as always; Marlon Wayans carries a disarming,
infectious grin; and Ellen Burstyn, whose real-life persona is one of beauty,
strength and intelligence, here just seems like a vulnerable old lady. These
personas inspire sorrow and concern, which builds as we see the characters
become more physically and emotionally shaken up, scarred and crushed. Eventually
things get so extreme we feel lying clawing at our seats and tunnelling
away.
The director, Darren Aaronowsky, carries us to
this point by way of so many immersing visual techniques that "Requiem for
a Dream" could be fairly described as one of the most viscerally assaulting
films ever made. Subtle use of split screen in the opening moments puts us
into scenes by letting us unconsciously gauge the space of whole rooms and
still concentrate on detailed, emotional close-ups of the actors' faces.
The cinematography is distinctively dark and haunting, creating an atmosphere
of absorbing gloom. An unbroken techno score pulsates throughout, throbbing
intense emotion at us like a racing heartbeat, and linking all scenes into
one tragic stream. And the climax of the movie is breathtaking -- a twenty
minute tour de force in which the cuts between the characters speed up to
manic velocity, thrusting catastrophe at us like a furious, piercing
scream.
You can't walk out of this movie. If you want
to leave, you'll run. It is a penetrating stare into the abyss that exposes
Danny Boyle's "Trainspotting" for the shallow pop video it was. Upon leaving
the cinema, I needed to find the nearest bar and grab a whisky, simply to
calm my nerves. That may seem an odd reaction to a movie about mind-altering
substances, but "Requiem for a Dream" is less about drugs than the psychology
and trajectory of addiction. The pill-popping mother thinks she's elevating
herself, and is far too needy to see sense. Harry and his friends believe
they're intelligent enough to handle their activities; and maybe they would
be, if control of circumstances were that simple. Ultimately drug users face
the following options -- give up their beloved substances, risk dependency
on them, or keep on regardless of consequences and suffer complete destruction.
What a choice.
COPYRIGHT© 2001 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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