Title Says It All

Rating: Null/10 (29 September 2002)

This film is brilliant, but very dark cinema. It is also highly stylized, as is Aronofsky's other film I have seen, the terrific Pi. It is not for everyone's taste, and due to the gruesomeness of its imagery and unsavoriness of the consequences of drug addiction depicted, it is very difficult to watch. Nevertheless, the depressing, but realistic message--that reality has an unfortunate habit of killing our dreams--is one which is seldom tackled to this effect in the Hollywood land of fairy tale endings.
The cast is terrific. Ellen Burstyn is wonderful and haunting in her Oscar-nominated role as Sara Goldfarb, the pathetic, lonely Brooklyn widow who just wants to be liked and needed by others. Her dream is to be a contestant on a television game show. This will enable her friends and the rest of America to see her in her best red dress--that fit her 50 pounds ago-- and to like her. Burstyn perfectly captures the naivety inherent in Sara's dream, and the desperation she later experiences in her realization of its elusiveness and ultimate loss after she loses her grip on sanity from taking too many diet pills.
Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans turn in excellent, gut-wrenching performances as heroin addicts. Their stories also depict dreams which turn into nightmares, as the unforeseen consequences of addiction (or obsession, to the exclusion of a well-balanced and more sober approach to life--take your pick) snatch attainment of their dreams from their grasps. Sean Gullette, who portrayed the protagonist in Pi, reappears as a low-life shrink. Keith David, perhaps best known as Mary's stepdad in There's Something About Mary ("Son, is it the frank or the beans?"), does a great job with his small role as Big Tim, and Christopher McDonald, usually a great movie foil, is spot-on as Tappy, the Tony Robbinsesque smarmy TV host. Louise Lasser and Dylan Baker also appear briefly.

Several of the reviews here have expressed that this movie is about the horrors of drug abuse and addiction. Well, perhaps on the surface this is true, but not really. The broader message, and one which is much more depressing, is that real life has a way of killing our dreams, whatever they may be. Few of us actually attain everything we hope and dream of. Few of us live as the idealized versions of ourselves that we aspire to be. The reality under the surface is often fraught with ugly habits, dirty little secrets, scandals, disappointments, failures, and just plain old banalities. Hence, the title--Requiem for a Dream.
The running gag of the film--the Tappy Tibbons infomercial game show Sara watches incessantly and dreams of appearing on--is the analog of the promise of the dream life. Here is everything you want and can have. Just send $39.95 to the P.O. Box and cut out red meat, refined sugar, and whatever #3 was. What actually happens to each of the four principal characters--that they spiral into their own individual tragedies--however, is analogous to real life. It's not pretty. Each of us lives with disappointment and despair from time to time. Each of us is going to die.
This is very heavy stuff. Not recommended as a date movie or for anyone with a terminally sunny disposition and simple approach to life.
9.5 out of 10.