Descending Into Junkie Hell.

Rating: 10/10 (5 May 2005)

One of the anti-drug slogans in the 80s was "Just say no," and it was given to us by not just the then First Lady, but by a slew of actors, many of them neck-deep into their own drug-induced binges fueled by too much money and a total lack of advice. If this movie had only come out then. Darren Aronofsky's powerful film REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is that ultimate slogan who never preaches its message: it just allows its presence to slowly filter itself into the images as the four people at the core of this story slowly begin to rot from the inside out as their "dreams" ultimately become replaced by the need to get high.
What begins as just another story of regular people living in relative complacency in Brooklyn, NY, each of them wearing their aspirations on their sleeves -- Sara Goldfarb to go on television; her son Harry and his friend Tyrone to make it big; Harry's girlfriend Marian to become an dress designer in her own right -- starts to go sour almost immediately. Sara, a widow living a lonely life, gets a call (or imagines it as it can be interpreted) that comes as a promise for things to get better: she will be a contestant in her favorite TV show which she watches compulsively as she downs sweets and to get slim for her Big Night she decides to take some "diet pills" to fit into her Red Dress. Harry and Tyrone experiment a little with the drugs they are selling and that leads to more and more and more. Into that web Marian is pulled, maybe out of her own displacement in the world, and since drugs passively target towards the displaced and the unwanted, making it all seem better -- we are informed that she is on the outs with her family even as they have given her full use of the apartment she lives in -- she falls under its spell.
One would think, though, that with drug usage things would change, perception would change. That we see Sara going through the motions not once, twice, but for hours and hours and hours on a stretch as the "diet pills" -- really speed -- take a hold over her is made more frightening when her own body starts cannibalizing itself and her own mind begins to wander. Her own security, her own privacy, literally becomes invaded one night as her own TV -- it in itself a source of addictive promises -- floods her own living room with a nightmarish game show that sends her screaming into the streets, Red Dress in tatters, a hag, still looking for her dream.
That we see relationships crumble -- Marian and Harry eventually become strangers to one another and any promise they will ever see each other again is hollow; Tyrone and Harry's friendship also collapses -- is only secondary to the power of storytelling and to the degrees that these characters descend in their addictions. At times it does seem too cruel to even watch: there is a sequence involving all of the character's final destiny that takes stomach to follow, but if the rot that addiction was still contained up until now, this final sequence -- the climax of the film -- lets all the pus out and sends it relentlessly out into the audience and not once are we let a moment's breath until it's over. There is a final, haunting sequence, one involving all of the characters crawling into a fetal position, destroyed beyond repair, that is heart-rending. These, after all, were once children and were safe (as Tyrone's last vision indicates).
The acting here is beyond all praise and material awards. Ellen Burstyn does what no actress yet has done in film history: push her physicality to extremes to convey an ordinary woman dehumanized by what she innocently thought were diet pills. She is a woman who could be anyone's mother, caught like a rabbit under a drug. All glamor and star ego goes out the window here -- and in doing so she single-handedly assured her Place in what is called being an Actress.
The same can be said with Jennifer Connelly in a role that could have been underwritten (and at times seems so) but in a move similar to Jennifer Jason Leigh she reveals herself so nakedly I'm almost sure her Best Supporting Oscar the following year was one a "consolation" award for being overlooked here. Both Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans come through with their lost yet sympathetic roles, Wayans more so, since we get that glimpse into his past and all he dreams is of being a good son to his Momma.
There is little relief but a painful compassion emerging from seeing REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. The Kronos Quartet and Clint Mansell create an equally tragic score (that has been used in promos for LORD OF THE RINGS), and contains images that already can be considered classic. Some may argue that Aronofsky goes too far with his message, but in doing so he strikes a nerve to anyone who sees this film.