Melodramatic and preachy

Rating: 5/10 (19 July 2009)

'Requiem for a Dream' is by no means a subtle film. It sets out to be an anti-drug film and goes about achieving this in the obvious manner - by depicting addicts in a downward spiral.
A few points. First of all none of the characters have particularly enviable lives to begin with, and whilst they end up in a far worse place than they start, one feels the drugs are only a symptom of a root problem - the pointlessness of their lives and the existential boredom it brings on. Furthermore none of the characters are remotely interesting people and it is hard to sympathise, much less empathise with them. Ellen Burstyn's character is pathetic to the point of being plain irritating and the three other main characters are a less than stimulating combination of moronic and dull. It is in this sense that the movie really fails - I simply didn't care about these people. And without engagement with the characters the movie becomes little more than an over wrought pornography of detached human suffering.
The movie is also irksome in its preachiness. It tries to bludgeon its message into viewers with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Simply put: take heroin and your life will be destroyed. Oh and forget all your dreams and aspirations, they will never come to pass. Heroin is without a doubt a heinous drug, but this message could have been conveyed in a far more effective and skillful manner and without talking down to audiences - as indeed it was in the far more accomplished 'Trainspotting'.
The movie is, for all this, artfully constructed and well-directed. Nonetheless some of the techniques fall flat and err on the side of gimicky. The split screen used at a few points during the course of the film is just plain annoying and serves little discernible purpose. The strongest aspect of the movie is probably Clint Mansell's haunting score (which first came to my attention long before I saw this film when the piece 'Lux Aeterna' was used in a trailer for 'The Two Towers').
Worth seeing, but not spectacular and certainly not life-changing.