Dark and Harrowing (SPOILERS INCLUDED!)

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2004)

Some movies are all about the mood they produce inside the viewer. These are the sort of movies that worm and cocoon their way inside the viewer's mind and make the viewer replay over and over in their mind every single sequence of the movie. These movies just don't let go of your soul. That is when you know a movie is truly great. Requiem is one of those movies.
The atmosphere that requiem conveys is a dark and hopeless one. We all have our burdens in life. Things that drag us down come from both outside and within. It is especially a tragedy when the latter occurs and Requiem is the first movie I know to quite explicitly make that its chief topic and convey this tragedy in all its unrelenting pain and intensity.
Basically, there are 4 main characters in the movie. A troubled youngster, his mother, his girlfriend and his friend. In one way or the other, they all want better than they have, a touch of meaning and sunshine in their lives. In one way or the other, they all end up turning to drugs, truly believing they are on a course of making their life better. An in one way or the other terrible fates befall all of them.
The most tragic fate is without a doubt is that of the elderly mother. That performance was without a doubt worthy of 10 Oscars. An old lady, whose husband has long since been gone and who has nothing better to do in life than to watch infomercials and basically wait to die, receives one of those fake "you're a winner" types of phone calls, which instills a belief in her that they will call her to be on television. There she can wear the lovely red dress that swooned the heart of the now-deceased love of her life and she can tell everyone all about her wonderful only son (who incidentally keeps stealing the TV from her so he can pawn it for drug money; she keeps buying it back). However, she is quite old and naturally with more weight than she had when she was young. The dress doesn't fit. She survives only one day on a restrictive diet. The one solution she finds are diet pills, which are prescribed by a doctor who notably avoids any eye contact with her at the check-up. These "diet pills" turn out to be uppers. They slim her down quite all right, they also make her disoriented and prone to harrowing hallucinations. In the end she runs out of her apartment into the street completely broken and disoriented, barging into an office building and in tears demanding to know why has she not been called on television. She gets admitted to a hospital and undergoes shock therapy. As a patient the only thing she can do is dream of being on the show with her son.
The other three fare no better. Initially, they are making a fortune selling drugs and all have other dreams they are now just on the verge of achieving. They don't even have much of a habit at the start. However, when a gang shootout creates a shortage, their addiction becomes apparent. The relationship between the son and his girlfriend deteriorates as finding "the bread" takes priority. The girl eventually resorts to selling her body at drug parties, while the other two head south in search for drugs. They get arrested, while the son's hand gets badly infected from intravenous drug use and must be cut off.
There are many things to like about this movie. The slow and subtle darkening of the tone. In the beginning, when things still all seem good, the tones are light and the lighting is natural. Slowly, but steadily it is replaced by artificial lighting, sounds become more confusing. The storyline is moved along by short visuals such as the sequences of blood surging, pill swallowing and eyes dilating. Fixed cameras are ingeniously used giving us a glimpse into the inner mental states of our protagonists. Film speeds up to give us an impression of someone on ecstasy while the entire atmosphere slows down and changes after the high wears off. At times the movie is quite scary. The soundtrack is of course very memorable and the tune will no doubt linger in people's minds for a long time. Lastly, the crescendo of the last 15 minutes is not for the faint of heart. Each destiny is intertwined with others in a sequence of absolute terror and destitude. Shock therapy, humiliating prison work, ultimate sexual debasement and losing one's arm are all rapidly spliced in parallel. It is the lowest point in the lives of each of these characters, the natural consequence of the entire movie.
This is one of my all time favorite movies.
Rating 10/10
Scale:
Positive opinion of a movie: 10 MASTERPIECE, 9 Excellent, 8 Good, 7 OK
Neutral opinion of a movie: 6 Adequate, 5 Average, 4 Mediocre
Negative opinion of a movie: 3 Poor, 2 Bad, 1 HORRIBLE