The pretentious title alone will impress many among the clueless... including everyone's favourite Discovery Channel "punk", Henry Rollins.

Rating: Null/10 (6 March 2008)

"Requiem For a Turd".
I can't shake off the nasty feeling that this is yet another thinly disguised attack at modern America (hence Capitalism), presenting it in a hysterically negative light, exaggerating every step of the way with absurdly immoral doctors, cops, and just about everyone else. A bleak mood is all well and fine, but let's not get carried away...
In fact, I checked out Hubert Selby's biography - and "surprise": yet another anti-American American. "Last Exit To Brooklyn" is also manic, laughable and designed to be controversial rather than intelligent. The fact that this talentless writer has been championed by people such as Allen Ginsberg and Henry Rollins really says it all... Henry Rollins has a brain the size of a peanut.
As if it weren't bad enough that Aronofsky thought that no-one else had covered drug use in movies before - what with same-old-same-old clichés of junkies stealing, dealing, and drooling - but the movie actually uses drug addiction as a cover to criticize the medical profession and law enforcement in a way in which an ignorant, radicalized, and endlessly naive 17 year-old hippie normally would. America - as seen through the eyes of someone who is so very disillusioned with his country. That moves me to tears. Really touching. Please hand me a handkerchief, the tears are threatening to drown me! Maybe the writers should move to Zambia, Colombia, or Mongolia and see how they like it there... See what a cruel life is really all about, the spoilt whining ninnies...
Requiem of a dream? Quite clearly it's the American Dream that is meant here.
I have always been amazed how so many people, both Americans and non-Americans, misunderstand the idea of the American Dream. They think that in theory it guarantees everyone success and a happy and prosperous life. That's utter nonsense, of course. Only Marxists believe in such a JohnLennonian world. All four central characters in ROAD have sub-par intelligence, which is obvious from almost everything they say - and do (especially). America doesn't and cannot guarantee everyone to realize their potential, simply because some people don't have any! Every society is going to have its misfits, losers - and whiners.
It's hard not to see the laughable irony in Aronofsky - a man living the America Dream, for all practical purposes - making a movie in which he proclaims the notion to be dead. However, as far as Selby is concerned, I can understand him to an extent: this man had been bed-ridden and seriously ill for most of his life so I can understand how bitter that can make a person become... This is no excuse, of course.
Sure the States has a health care problem, but to so one-sidedly portray all those involved in it as parasites and lunatics is going a bit too far. ROAD is also complete with the obligatory Southern racist cop who so very predictably hits Wayans for no reason and calls him a "nigger". Selby's novel "The Room" is about evil cops imprisoning innocent people (according to liberals, a thing that happens 150,000 times a day).
The only reason I gave this pretentious drama 3 points is because there was at least some attempt at experimentation (otherwise ROAT would have been an extremely dull movie) and for the very interesting soundtrack.
I wasn't too thrilled with the cast picked here. Jared Leto, yet another bland androgynous midget, an always overrated Burstyn, plus I also have to question the intelligence in picking a Wayans brother - and Marlon at that! - to play in a heavy-handed drama like this. If you want to make a serious drama, a word of advice: GET SOME SERIOUS ACTORS. What's next, a holocaust movie with Jim Carrey?
For more on Leto: http://rateyourmusic.com/collection/Fedor8/