Tragedy shouldn't be so kinetic.

Rating: 3/10 (8 November 2000)

I cannot deny that Aronofsky's film had a major impact on me. The night after I saw the film (election night, as it turned out), I woke up twice with nightmares directly relating to the film. While many critics have said that the film is powerful because it graphically depicts the horrors of drug dependency, I'm not convinced that Aronofsky isn't more interested in creating characters whose plummet into unspeakable degradation becomes an excuse for aestheticized gruesomeness, showy montage experimentation, and take-it-to-the-brink filmmaking for its own sake. The characters in REQUIEM never struck me as altogether real; rather, they are emblems of waste and desperation, put through their paces in order to provide grist for a callous, moralistic, and ultimately exploitive film. This is a shame, because my hopes were high. There is no denying that Aronofsky's images pack a brutal punch -- I still can't shake them. But I think a slower, less bravura execution of this set of stories might've conveyed human loss, instead of "Look, Ma! Watch me cross-cut!" Not recommended, unless you want to be pummelled for what strike me as dubious reasons.