REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000) review:

What is the month of November if not the month of remembrance, of mourning… a requiem if you will. Perhaps it’s the reason why we call it Fall, the descent into days of a year being numbered. Why say this? Well, I did what at one time I thought impossible back in February: I watched Darren Aronofsky’s magnum opus (an opinion I’d heard on the streets and now embrace) Requiem for a Dream. It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts down because, like most decent humans, the constant trauma this film puts you in during and indeed after the viewing was something I didn’t wish to return to. Yet, like a drug addiction, it lingered and grew to the point of being irresistible and I ended up watching it again two nights ago. And it seemed November, the darkest month of the year, was perfect to post it. I cannot say my review will turn heads for originality but it does exist to share a subjective experience of someone who was less afraid of this than the worst horror movies. What I can say is that the traumatic toll expected on me as a viewer was most definitely received. Why? Literally, a second after the credits rolled, I came down with a cold! If that isn’t telling of how bad an impact this will leave you, I don’t know what will.

Aronofsky has earned a reputation for being the guy who will go where others dare not. He has created grounded dramas, psychological thrillers and dark religious fantasies. In all of those, he generates truly the worst emotions from us as viewers because he portrays the worst aspects of our cruel world onscreen. Requiem for a Dream is still to this day the greatest of his craft because it is a combination of all of that. It certainly isn’t Aronofsky’s first film but, like Tarantino, this put him on the map after. Despite only achieving vague success with the inexpensive Pi, Aronofsky came in with a budget of a slightly bigger margin and yet roped in some of the biggest names of their day. Jennifer Connolly and Jared Leto had just got themselves Oscars and Ellen Burstyn had been around for decades. Clearly, something smelt appealing about the young and hungry Aronofsky if he could get these names in, not to mention make a mid-budget movie look as visually distinct and artistically striking. True, the 23 years are showing its age, but that works, in my eyes, towards the cold, sole-crushing experience the depraved auteur wants you to go through. Matthew Libatique, a frequent collaborator with Aronofsky, creates something that looks unreal in the glazed colouring, promoting the fantasy the four antiheroes produce for themselves. It’s particularly noticeable in the scenes where Leto’s Harry interacts with his mother or girlfriend yet when the bad stuff happens, or at least when the drugs withdraw, shots become more defined, as if we’re slapped back in reality. 

It’s the marriage of the script, the performances of the four actors and the technicality that gives it the impact it requires. The use of the SnorriCam and Jay Rabinowitz, who applies his commercial editing days to create those iconic drug inducement montages, place us in a personal relationship with these four unfortunates, not to mention the constant, almost claustrophobic close-ups. I also ask to look up the preparation behind the scenes from the actors and director and the way that Aronofsky worked with the author of the novel counterpart on the screenplay, making everything feel authentic despite the artistic merit he adopts. The film is one such experience where if shown to a group and they were asked which scene crushed them the most, they’d potentially have different answers. For me, it comes from the scene where Sara Goldfarm justifies her pill enhancement. It would be one thing to make a film about three junkies, but the focus on an old lady finding no meaning to her life, in the past as well as the present, puts the core theme of addiction into perspective. Aronofsky and Burstyn noted that the character of Sara asks the question of what truly is a drug? The addiction isn’t in the pill or substance, but rather the need and end goal to get more out of life and the endeavours you go through to make it work. Plus, the addiction to reality TV and the need for attention are all present here. Sara invites us on a journey into how the void of addiction and the subsequent ravaging of one’s life can happen to even a humble woman at the end of her journey having done nothing wrong herself. Whilst it’s sad to see Marion, Tyrone and Harry (to an extent) have their lives tarnished, Sara’s is the most traumatising, even more so because she still keeps to that dream where she is admired and has a reason to get up in the morning, lying in a foetal position as if being birthed into her new existence as a dumb victim of her own needs. And leaving out Aronofsky’s script and direction that already gives this character life, it’s pretty easy to agree this wouldn’t have worked without the acting mastery of Ellen Burstyn. A performance this special, this visceral and this unforgettable doesn’t even require words beyond “watch it to believe”. All I can say is that the fact that Burstyn, one of the greatest actresses to walk the earth, wasn’t awarded the Oscar for it is the ultimate indicator that the ceremony is not worth our time. It’s a performance that should be taught in schools or even requires its own post if I pluck up the courage to revisit this again. It may just be the greatest of all visual fiction! 

The four lead performances are incredible at worst - particularly from Jared Leto and an-out-of-type Marlon Wayans - but then you have Burstyn and Jennifer Connolly, who’s as always a favourite of mine but to see her placed in a role that requires a lot of *ahem* physicality, which requires a lot of courage and Connolly deserves eternal applause for it. The two and their character’s tragic downfalls have haunted me ever since the first watch. It’s coupled with the fact that even during their happy scenes at the beginning, you can tell there’s a falsehood to it from the split screen editing to the constant score that I’ll talk about shortly. Oh, but Keith David… I shudder even as I type the words on this keyboard because the legendary voice actor storms in for just five minutes of screen time and leaves an earth-shaking impact as one of the scariest antagonists of all time. His entrance marks the point where the film’s downward spiral reaches the bottom of the abyss. From then on, it’s just four separate horror shows of the most visceral nightmares spliced together - the last twenty minutes are an editing montage of terror. No review would be fully clothed without a mention of Clint Mansell’s score, one that topped the charts and reappeared on subsequently released blockbuster trailers for the next decade. Although whilst those trailers play it for epic action effect, this uses the sombre sections and on every occasion it is played it is heart-breaking.

Aronofsky is to me with his fandom (which I can proclaim now to be a part of) like a demigod with his fearful worshipers. I go into his movies knowing that they will change my relationship with film criticism. They’re not just temporary experiences, they’re events! They always generate career-best performances from actors editors and musical artists. After avoiding this movie for ten executive years like a child does a monster under the bed, I can safely say that Darren Aronofsky’s quintessential movie, after his debut in Pi, changed my life forever in all the expected ways. And for that reason, it’s a masterpiece!