It haunts

Rating: 10/10 (1 February 2001)

The critic in me wants to dismiss this film as style over substance, as being too long on melodrama and too short on character, or at worst manipulating feelings against a habit (drug abuse) already generally known to be undesirable.
But the human in me cannot deny how hauntingly beautiful the film's images are, how just hearing the film's string quartet theme stirs memories of the film's characters and their inexorable plummet towards self-destruction, how every time I think on Ellen Burstyn's last line I feel as though tears could come at any moment.
Darren Aronofsky has painted a harrowing, at moments amusing, and in every way touching world in this movie.