Something about life that you won't learn in school or college

Rating: 9/10 (27 September 2003)

***SPOILER ALERT*** Dark and gruesome but at the same time extremely realistic movie about the use and addiction to drugs both legal and illegal and the tragic results to those involved. The movie "Requiem for a Dream" doesn't take place in the ghettos of the inner cities that we're used to seeing stories like this but in the middle-class and mostly Jewish neighborhood of Conley Island in Brooklyn NY.
The story of "Requiem for a Dream" centers around four people, Sara, Eilen Byrson, her son Harry, Jared Leto, his girlfriend Marion, Jennifer Connelly, and Harry's best friend Tyrone, Marlon Wayans. Sara lives by herself with her son Harry in a high rise apartment in Conley Island. Widowed she watches TV and wants to be a contestant on a show that she loves but feels that she's too heavy and not attractive looking enough to be on TV and have all her friends see her.
Sara's son Harry is a local neighborhood hustler who steals TV's or whatever else he can get his hands on to make some money to get himself through the day. Harry's girlfriend Marion seems to come from a good family but she's in love with Harry and as we all know that "Love is Blind". Marion doesn't seem to care what Harry is doing and where he might well end up, she just want's to be with him, and feels that they both together will somehow make a go of their lives because Harry has a good mind for business and will work himself up the ladder at whatever vocation he takes up.
One day Harry's best friend Tayrone comes up with an idea that they can all make lot's of money by selling drugs and that he has a connection that will get them started in the venture. Meanwhile Harry's mom Sara gets a reply to an application that she sent to the TV show that she watches all day and night that she's been accepted to be on the show as a contestant. Sara starts trying to lose weigh by taking pills that she buys over the counter or what her doctor prescribes to her and in no time all she becomes addicted to them.
Harry Tyrone as well as Marion at first are making big money in their drug business but after a while with the threat of the police as well as other rivals drug dealers, and not to mention the addicts that they deal with, their drug business starts to dry up. Before long all three like most drug dealers also become addicted to the very drugs that they were selling.
Darren Aronosfsky's "Requiem for a Dream" is one of the most depressing as well as realistic movies about urban life in regards to drug addiction that's ever been filmed. I have to remind the readers that it takes a very strong stomach to be able to sit through and watch the movie. In the end we see what drugs can do the the human mind body and spirit and it isn't very pretty.
Hollywood has come a long way in the making of movies about drug addiction since the Frank Sinatra Film "Man with the Golden Arm" back in 1955. "Requiem for a Dream" is a movie everyone should see regardless of it's really disturbing bleak and down right pit-in-hell ending. If it were made back in 1955 when "Man with the Golden Arm" was released and if millions of people saw it back then the drug problems of today would be a hell of a lot smaller.