Darren Aronofsky's Brilliance - A Review

Rating: 10/10 (11 June 2001)

Darren Aronofsky's latest effort, Requiem for a Dream, portrays a descent into the depths of chemical dependency. The film begins its crescendo of tension with the heisting of Sarah Goldfarb's(Ellen Burstyn) television set by her son Harry(Jared Leto) and his comrade Tyrone(Marlon Wayans) to fund their experimentation with drugs. This experimentation soon escalates to drug-pushing, an enterprise innately prone to failure, and then culminates with the ensemble's full-blown terminal addiction. All the while, parallels are drawn between the story of Harry, Marrian(his girlfriend, played by beautiful Jenniffer Connoly), Tyrone, and Harry's mother as they all waste away in their various terminal addictions. Jennifer resorts to de-facto prostitution to finance Harry's and Tyrone's drug entrepeneurship, while Harry's arm succumbs to the defilement of heroin addiction, as he and Tyrone desperately try to chase down more `pieces' upon which to fix themselves and grow their business. Perhaps the most intense and depressing story of them all is that of Harry's mother, Sarah, who finds herself in the midst of a loneliest inferno exaggerated by her physical addiction to weight-diet pills. In all its astounding surrealism, never once does Aronofsky surrender Â‘Requiem' to mindless shock-ridden chaos, the excesses of bad horror movies. Everything in the movie serves to further the film's overall coherence and intensity: the quick edits, the use of psychadelic color and twitching lights, the careful, meticulous, deliberate construction of shots. Aronofsky smoothly, but deliberately, switches between each person's perspective as the story rolls onward; and while the story is told in the third-person, its tone is wholly first-person. We are outside the mind of each victim, but the experience conveys the same percieved intensity of drug-addiction to someone who has never been addicted to drugs; in this, we are brought into the mind of the addict. Aronofsky's masterful direction and the film's editing give it a sense of being one inch away from reality: and in this, the film truly portrays the actuality of drug addiction. The actors themselves masterfully helped to heighten the experience: Burstyn's performance is extremely poignant at many points throughout, and as usual is worthy of a Best Actress award. Jared Leto and, unexpectedly, Marlon Wayans, shine in their roles along with beautiful Jennifer Connoly, who never once, even with the severely detrimental effects of heroin and cocaine, seems to lose her beautiful visage(perhaps a more frightening prospect than visible deterioration). If you've ever thought about trying cocaine or heroin, watch this movie. If you are already addicted to cocaine or heroin, watch this movie. I assure you, if it does not scare you out of drug abuse, if it does not rescue you from that cliff of devastation, then you are owed your money back. Overall, the movie accomplishes everything it aspires to accomplish, with flying colors. Darren Aronofsky is brilliant. See it. Overall Rating: 10/10