More A Nightmare than A Dream, 'Requiem for a Dream' is An Addiction In Itself!

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2015)

'Requiem for a Dream' - What an inappropriately dozy title for such an explosive film! Darren Aronofsky's nerve-corroding adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel depicts drug abuse's annihilative properties using a sobering sensory blitzkrieg. It takes four relatively happy and balanced individuals and it watches almost clinically as each one messes up his existence through addiction.
Set in Brooklyn, we first meet the characters when Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) comes round to his mother Sara's (Ellen Burstyn) for his regular habit of pawning her belongings in order to buy drugs. Swiftly afterwards, we meet the other two main characters: Harry's girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and his best friend Tyrone (a barely recognizable Marlon Wayans). The movie then follows its inspired three-act structure of 'Summer', 'Fall' and 'Winter', as the characters chase their various dreams and obsessions. Harry, Marion and Tyrone are all hooked on drugs and they dream of being 'on Easy Street' – to that end, they conceive a plan to buy, cut and sell heroin, but they soon get a little too fond of their own product. Sara, meanwhile, is also addicted, to her daily routine of coffee and television, specifically a show that is part infomercial, part game-show. So when she gets a routine junk-mail call that appears to promise her a place as a contestant, she starts to obsess about fitting into an old red dress, and becomes hooked on amphetamines as a result. Visions of luxury become inescapable nightmares of insatiable itches — to be thin, rich, applauded, feared. Requiem for a Dream glamorizes nothing en route to a near-nauseating finale. As the absence of 'Spring' in the chapter titles hints, it's a near-operatic descent into hell for all concerned! Darren Aronofsky is a visceral film-maker, and here he pulls out all the stops to create a truly hypnotic experience. He repeatedly shows us the various junkie 'routines' of cooking, shooting up, or of making coffee and popping pills, shot in close-up and edited together rapidly. When added to Clint Mansell's aching, agonizing score that crescendos to audible reckoning, this has the intended effect of conveying the sudden rush the characters are experiencing, as indicated by the repeated shots of dilating eyeballs that end each montage.
As his four ill-fated characters, Mr. Aronofsky assembles an unexpectedly strong cast. Both Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans give commendable performances. Jennifer Connelly imbues her character with vulnerability and sexuality even as she stares pale-faced into the bathroom mirror desperate for a fix. As for Ellen Burstyn, she's brutal to watch. You really see her deteriorate before your eyes, going from Mommy dearest to that whacked out old hag raving in the subway. Burstyn gets thin, then thinner, her hair dye gets uglier and uglier, her make-up messier, always more obsessed with her game show and her stupid red dress. The actress manages to trace a frighteningly real portrait of emergent obsession fueled by loneliness, sadness and vanity.
Yes, visually this is an exhilarating, unique film. But it is also a singularly difficult and challenging film to watch. More a nightmare than a dream, Requiem for a Dream becomes an addiction in itself.