Do not watch while under the influence of ANYTHING.

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2001)

**SPOILERS**Drugs, alcohol, painkillers, don't even watch this if you've taken ASPIRIN within the last 24 hours. Requiem For A Dream is extremely moving and powerful and REAL and it could only bring out the worst of any type of mind-altering substance. I watched this film stone sober and in the middle of the night, and when it was over I was almost afraid that the sun wasn't going to come up in the morning. This is one of the most powerful anti-drug movies to have been released in years.
And the thing that really sets this film apart is that it is not a crash course in all of the bad side effects of drugs. There are numerous characters in several different storylines that all converge and deliver a unique message. This is one of the things that made movies like American Beauty so good, there is just so much going on. The film is a spiraling downfall for all of the characters involved, but it manages to have an unusually strong impact because of its realism, which is ironic because one of the film's strong points is its striking use of editing. There is a constant use of creative and disorienting editing and cinematography, which gives the film a feeling of being a little off at all times, but it manages to remain realistic enough not to lose any impact.
As far as editing, I was particularly impressed with the creative use of the split screen. The film starts off with a scene in which Harry (Jared Leto) borrows his mother's television set, and she is so upset that she locks herself in the other room. In the split screen, we see Harry from two different angles, and on one side, we see broken shots, while the other side shows continuous action. This is done with multiple cameras, so it's not the sheer difficulty that I noticed as much as the creativeness. And of course, being a drug film, it is full of interesting and sometimes disturbing editing and cinematography.
Jared Leto is excellent as Harry Goldfarb, a junkie who wants to sell enough drugs to really support himself, his girlfriend, his partner in trafficking (Tyrone), and most importantly, his mother. The relationship between Harry and his mother Sarah is the one from which the majority of the emotion in the film is derived, as well as from his girlfriend Marion's descent into drug-induced prostitution. Ellen Burstyn is stunningly effective as Sarah Goldfarb, Harry's mother, who lives exactly the existence that you spend your entire youth hoping to never have to live. She is alone, she's overweight and unattractive, and she's so obsessed with getting onto a stupid TV show just one time that she goes on such an intense crash diet that she literally drives herself insane. The antagonistic refrigerator, by the way, is one of the more interesting things about the film, and should also be noted for its originality. What was the last respectable film you saw in which an inanimate object like a refrigerator was made to have such a successfully menacing presence? Jennifer Connelly has changed dramatically from the cute actress that we saw in older movies like Labyrinth and Career Opportunities and The Rocketeer. In Requiem For A Dream, she delivers a spectacular performance, proving her skill as an actor. But it is the performance from Marlon Wayans that is by far the most surprising and noteworthy. He plays the part of Tyrone with such amazing skill that it is almost impossible to believe that this is the same idiot that we saw in the god-awful Scary Movies. Way to go, Marlon, but stick with the movies that can be enjoyed by people with more than one brain cell in operation, like Requiem For A Dream.
(spoilers) Another thing that this movie does on more than one occasion is give an example of How People Get Like That. Every time I see or hear about a homeless person or a mental patient (which is not often, I admit) or a woman so strung out on drugs that she would sell her body to get her fix, I always wonder what must have happened in that person's life for them to have wound up like that. Requiem For A Dream provides a perfectly plausible story in which a nice but rather pathetic woman becomes obsessed with her chance to appear on television and winds up getting electro-shock therapy against her will in a mental hospital, and then we see that Marion winds up engaging in lesbian shows for crowds of drunken jerk-offs, and Harry shoots up so much in the same arm that he has to have it amputated. These are the kinds of things that make you wonder how they got like that, and in this movie we see how it happened and its believable.
Requiem for a Dream is not one of the most cheery movies I've ever seen, in fact, it is downright disturbing at many points, but it is powerful and effective and should be noted for that. The film is photographed and edited in creative and interesting ways, which not only makes it fascinating to watch but also enhances the drug element of the film, which was also a technique used with huge success in the must more well known film Traffic. There is a lot of difficult to watch material in this movie, but it is a very well thought out film. Not for the weak of heart, but this is an excellent piece of cinematography.