More of a Nightmare Than a "Dream"

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2001)

Disturbing' gets a whole new aspect with Darren Aronofsky's `Requiem for a Dream,' a horrific film about the descending spiral of drug addiction.
Not since Stanley Kubrick's 1971 classic `A Clockwork Orange' has a film made me feel so awkward, until now. `Requiem for a Dream,' Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to his 1998 cult indie `Pi,' is basically the closest thing you are going to find to a nightmare on celluloid. It really accomplishes what it sets out to do, which is to disturb us with the downward spiral of drug addiction.
Does the film go far enough to maybe even scare some people straight? Yes! The story focuses on four Brooklyn-raised lives, Harry, played by Jared Leto, Marion, played by Jennifer Connelly, Tyrone, played by Marlon Wayans, and Sarah, played by Ellen Burstyn, in one of her top performances.
Sarah is a lonely, overweight, widowed, daytime television addict whose only perks in life are her television and an occasional visit from her son, Harry (even though he's normally there to pawn her tv for drugs). One day, she finds out that she has been selected to be on television. Determined to lose weight and fit into her precious red dress again, she starts taking three diet pills a day. Before you know it, she's popping them down like M&Ms.
Around the same time, Harry and his best friend, Tyrone, are becoming very successful and prolific with their drug dealing on the Coney Island boardwalk. They begin to score pure coke and frequently get high, fantasizing their own dreams. Also through shooting up, Harry and his girlfriend, Marion, experience their beautiful love for each other, but by Fall, business begins to slow down and things take a turn for the worst.
The film takes place throughout Summer, Fall, and eventually Winter. The characters completely fall apart as do their dreams, loves, and health. The beautiful Ellen Burstyn becomes an emaciated monstrosity with these harrowing nightmares which eventually abolishes her saneness. Harry's inability to score well draws Marion away from him and into giving away her body for drugs. And Tyron's All of this leads to a finale that will send chills up the back of your neck and will refrain you from sleep for at least a week.
Everybody in the film puts on the performances of their careers, especially Marlon Wayans who shows us that, behind the comic idiocy of his `Scary Movie' stereotype, he is really a great actor. Still, even with the three other breathtaking performances, Ellen Burstyn steals the screen with her rendition of Sarah Goldfarb which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nomination and probably should have even earned her the award (sorry, Julia, but it's true). Darren Aronofsky shows us with `Requiem' that he could very well be the next Kubrick. To express the feeling of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s 1971 novel, on which the film is based, Aronofsky uses every filmmaking trick that he knows from split screens, hyper edits, speedy and slow paces, and even his famous snorriecam, which he made famous with `Pi.'
`Requiem for a Dream' is one film that should be shown in high school classrooms across the country to give kids nightmares about their futures with drug addictions. Instead, thanks to the MPAA, it has been rated NC-17 which restricts the age group of people from seeing it who sincerely need to see it the most.
Sure, sometimes it can all seem like too much (I for one could have lived without seeing the shock therapy scene), but it is all necessary to get the film's point across, making `Requiem for a Dream' more like a nightmare. A+ ¦