Experience failure of the body and soul.

Rating: Null/10 (16 March 2015)

Before he directer movies about Noah's Ark, Darren Aronofsky had a set of skills behind the camera that incorporated audiences into his films like no other independent filmmaker. In his darkest and most profound work "Requiem For a Dream," we engage with four lives ruined by a dangerous aspect of our society- drugs. Four different addicts all see their lives crumble into pieces from seemingly habitual drug usage that unfolds into a mind-shattering and destructive addiction. Sara (Ellen Burstyn in a profound performance) is a lonely widow hooked on diet pills while her son Harry (Jared Leto) is a junkie hooked on heroin with his lost girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) and his buddy. All four characters have desires and goals that get crushed by the addiction of drugs that flat-out ruin their lives. With flawless details on the atrocities and horrors of drug abuse, Aronofsky shows you everything bad about drugs. He shows you, not tells you. Aronofsky has done something special. He makes you feel as if your the one using drugs, not the characters. Instead of watching various failures abuse themselves, he places you inside their skin through his kinetic and speedy camera-work and the artistic cinematography composed on dark lighting and terrifying sounds to drag you into a brutal and flawless nightmare. With legendary performances and a diverse range of people to show how drug abuse can happen to any people of any race, age, or gender, "Requiem For a Dream" is an important classic useful for educating the public on drug addiction and on how to get the blood pumping from an audience while simultaneously swooping them off their feet. Arronofsky and sacrificially Ellen Burstyn deliver work for the ages that can only haunt you and stick in you gut like an actual drug.