Movie Review

Rating: Null/10 (27 November 2013)

It is natural for every human being to crave and yearn for a fixation. Whether it its alcohol, drugs, sex, media, or food, everyone is enamored on something or the other. Innate compulsion. In Requiem for a Dream, we understand what happens when your addiction deludes you, and that some addictions are metaphors for others. What is worse is that substances that are illegal are the only ones deemed immoral. In this film, we learn that it makes no difference whether society has deemed it morally remiss or not, if you rely on a material substance as a means to survive, with the exception of food and sex, then you are no different than a regular drug addict.
The film introduces Sarah Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), who plays the role of an elderly, overweight Brooklyn widow who lives a repetitive, boring lifestyle with her peers. When she is given the opportunity to appear on a popular self-help television show, she decides she wants to lose some weight in the hopes of fitting into a small red dress that she wore years ago to her son's high-school graduation. Unable to stick to a healthy diet, which would deny her the comfort of carbohydrates, she turns to diet pills. The pills turn out to constitute for legalized "speed," ultimately resulting in hyperactivity that sheds the weight, though discreditably.
Her troubled son, Harry (Jared Leto), begins running a small drug enterprise with the help of his best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayons). Though they succeed almost immediately, they become heavily addicted to the substances as the need to test the "merchandise" grown. Harry's girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly) becomes an advocate of theirs, though her addiction surpasses theirs, eventually leading her to a different realm altogether, one nobody could have imagined.
As the downward spiral begins, Harry becomes detached from his loved ones. No longer do his mother and him maintain their close ties, till the point that they begin to escape each other's memory. Harry and Tyrone become fixated on making up for the financial losses they generated by abusing their products that their friendship is put to test. Regressing into her own deteriorating world, Marion consigns to oblivion regarding everybody she knows, placing heroin as the sole key to her happiness.
Over the course of the movie, we learn that addiction, when turned to, always gets the best of you. The characters gradually lose consciousness of what caused them to first begin their habit as they sink lower. Gone is Sarah's ambition to lose weight, Harry's to be financially successful, and so on. The film makes clear to the viewer of the perils of substance abuse. It is formidable, it is lurid, and it is above all, penitent.
The transition of the characters' personalities is evident throughout the course of the film, especially Ellen Burstyn's as she hauntingly portrays the loneliness of old age and insecurity. Her transformation from innocently trusting to hopeless addict is sympathetic and disconsolate, never desperate or despondent. It was heartbreaking to watch as this plain and sincere woman watched her dreams die.
Requiem for a Dream ends on unsettling note. It was a thought provoking, powerful, electrifying story. Aronofsky knows that in order to properly tell a story about being entrapped, he must not make any room for the viewer to be left asking, "Is everything going to be okay?" Since as the film came to a conclusion, I knew that nothing was okay. At some points, the film is distressing to watch; yet at the same time, we are engrossed. In a film so much about everyday addiction, I found it appropriate that I had trouble looking away, making my ability to resist stronger.