A bad trip (minor spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (4 January 2002)

In a way, "Requiem" is a typical junkie film. Like all junkie films, it portrays the junkie's life as a long, bad trip--the initial high, the encroaching freakiness, and the crash.
But "Requiem" goes further. It isn't just ABOUT a bad trip, it IS a bad trip. A really, really bad one. Don't get stoned before you watch this one, there's no need. The camera is stoned. Every shot is overloaded with meaning. Aronofsky uses fast motion, slow motion, stop motion, trippy colors, relentlessly tense string music, and strange sounds. He uses maverick technique, not dialog, to make his points. An example: An old woman gets strung out on diet pills and goes to see her sleazy doctor. But she can't seem to communicate with him--she moves and speaks in incoherent slow motion, and he flits through the room like a hummingbird.
But what you'll remember most about the film is the crash portion, the part where the trip goes off the rails. It's a relentless, excruciating descent into madness, depravity, and violence. You think Aronofsky has dragged his characters to a new on-screen low, but it gets worse. And then, stunningly, worse again. A character is subjected to agonizing, endlessly repetitive shock therapy. Another suffers the total debasement of performing sex acts in front of a crowd of young drunken suits for crack. Another has his arm amputated. It's so extreme, it's almost comic. You don't know whether to giggle or vomit.
So what's the point of all this? Mostly, it seems, that drugs are bad. Aronofsky throws in some obvious parallels between addiction to drugs and addiction to other things like coffee, chocolate, high-fat foods, and television. But this is hardly revolutionary stuff. The story isn't profound, but the way Aronofsky tells it is--profoundly unsettling, anyway. You never forget bad trips, although sometimes you wish you could.