Re-establishes and raises the bar for "drug movies"

Rating: Null/10 (3 January 2001)

So many others have contributed their comments on the stars and general style and arc of this film, so I will be more focused in this analysis on placing this film within a wider context.
After a number of films appeared in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that stripped away at least some of the romanticism of drug use, Requiem For A Dream sets a new standard through which to see the new crop of upcoming drug films, including Traffic and Blow. Among the earlier efforts, I felt both Rush (a rather underrated film) and Drugstore Cowboy came closest to an accurate portrayal of the life cycle of using/abusing. Others have cited Christiane F also in this regard, though I have yet to see it. Other films, especially Bad Lieutenant, Liquid Sky and Trainspotting, were narratively driven more by their flashy stylistics than the story told through the characters, though the former has very subtle plot threads that appear above Abel Ferrara's stylistic excesses. Trainspotting tended to be romantic about drug use despite it's "choose life" metaphor. Films such as New Jack City cloaked any anti-drug messages amid the flashy excitement of the drug mafia. Perhaps King Of New York is a more balanced view in that regard, being actually a rather restrained Ferrara film, a kind of warmup to Bad Lieutenant. True Romance quickly abandoned any relation to accuracy in turning to a cartoon-like portrayal of the good guys versus the bad guys with the doomed couple in-between.
Though there have been any number of films in the later 90s that had drug use as a subtext (High Art, for example), the cycle of drug-themed movies has ebbed until the advent of Requiem For A Dream in late 2000. It surely takes off at a level beyond anything we've seen before. It is realistic: real and hyper-real at the same time, it shows us people like some we may know who want more out of life, and feel they deserve it now, so they take the short cut that drugs offer in many ways, shapes and forms. The incredible stylistic effort of Aronofsky's production puts the film form in place to drive the content - again, the story portrayed is quite simple, the message not quite so. It shows us escapism in any form can be a recipe for tragedy, with the outcome quite different from the desired result.
As I left the film, quite stunned in a way I have not felt since Henry Portrait Of A Serial Killer, a woman asked me how I felt about the picture. I told her unless she had been around the block a couple of times, she may find the film hard to relate to (this despite Ellen Burstyn's part). I think anyone who has been in situations where drugs are seen as the goal to the promised land, with people around who literally proselytize drug culture as a model to be aspired to, can clearly see what's going on here. The forceful nature of this film may obscure some of its message, but upon careful examination the thematics of the film can be teased out.