Style outweighs substance

Rating: 5/10 (24 May 2001)

"Requiem" suffers from what I call the "Thomas Crown Affair Syndrome." Darren Aronofsky tries hard to dazzle us with visuals so much that it gets exhausting and repetitive after a while, just like the overuse of split-screen technology in "Thomas Crown." There are some haunting montages, like the one at the end, which I thought was edited very well and done very well, but most of the time they just look either foolish or unnecessary.
The characters are underdeveloped, and the whole film seems to function on a superficial level. There's a fine line between substance and pretention. This movie uses more of the latter. It does have redeeming qualities like a career-making performance for Jared Leto, who was terrific and feigned a very convincing Brooklyn accent, and a great original score. Ellen Burstyn's performance was good, though I didn't think it was worthy of an Oscar nomination. I have to admit that making herself look more unattractive by the minute was a huge risk, though, and I have to commend her for that.
"Requiem for a Dream" would've been more effective if it didn't depend almost solely on flashy direction. The style outweighs substance, and after watching this film I was more exhausted than stunned.
My score: 5 (out of 10)