We're all nervous bundles of addictions and vices

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2018)

Darren Aronofsky is a problematic director for me to categorize. I can honestly say that I've liked all the films I've seen from him, but none of them are something I'd casually recommend to a friend. Some are even such that I doubt I'll ever rewatch them.
Partly that's Aronofsky's scale. His films range from a deeply symbolic examination of time, love and pattern, where a man flies in space on a literal flying tree, to a pseudo-realistic portrayal of ballerina's struggles with her life. With Requiem for a Dream landing somewhere between these two extremes.
The easiest theme to find in this film is that of addiction. The film follows four Coney Island people, three of them heavily addicted to heroin. But it's the fourth, the character of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), that provides the echo wall for this obvious addiction. The word addict immediately brings to mind mind-altering substances, but is someone so bound by media that she cannot live without it truly any different. And if she isn't, what does that say about the rest of us. We all have our vices, our favourite things. And those addictions can run deep, to places we don't care talk about.
It's an unpleasant film to watch. Not in a way such as Trainspotting, which is mainly just filthy and unclean, though this film has heavy shades of that as well, but because Aronofsky focuses on the weirdness side of drug use. How taking heroin or other pills shatters the dream-reality barrier and shatters it in such a way that's scary beyond belief. It's dream, but in a way that lurks just behind the corner of your eyes, waiting.
The best films are those that make you think. The ones you keep returning to in your thoughts. And this clearly belongs in that elusive category.