A Complete Film.

Rating: Null/10 (16 August 2002)

Spoiler Alert Aronfsky delivers a troubling work about drugs through, what I consider, the true use of film. He has managed to take advantage of every aspect of filmmaking available in order to drive home his vision. There is not a single component of this work that is not additive.
The title: think of the subtle meaning. Requiem, a song for the dead. I love the implication and foreshadowing. I can read two interesting interpretations: (1) The dream is dead before it begins; (2 -- and the one I believe) the people who are dreaming are already dead.
The acting: a beautiful performance by each actor. Not a single expression or characterization is wasted. Each breath seems to be in sync with the pace of the editing.
The lighting: the most glaring example is when the camera trucks across Sara Goldfarb's apartment, from the cavernous bedroom, to the multi-fluorescent living room/kitchen -- I love the green halo around the fridge.
The editing: while, I agree with an other commenter, that some of the editing at the front of the film is obvious, the editing in the last third is powerful. The editing manages to keep your mind where the director wants it. I would certainly call this a lesson in Eisenstein's montage theory.
The script: the language phases in and out of quality and derangement in the same was as the various "push-offs" in the story. The accents are never over used.
The score: I think enough has been said -- it's amazing!
I really only have one problem with the movie, the end. I can read the end in two ways. A major let down, in terms of the fact that the mother ends happy (at least in her mind). And while deranged, and left with the vision of her friends crying, we never learned to care for her friends anyway. Also, I don't feel like Tryone's (Wayans) torment is serious enough, relative to the others. I was expecting him to be raped by an inmate; in the same style he had sex with that girl earlier. And, finally, I don't believe that Marion (Connelly) is delivered into a deep enough hell -- but, maybe I'm too American.
The positive way to read the end of the movie, is it is purely anti-climatic, much the way drug use is. And so the pace of the film as a whole might be analogous to a use.
Bottom line is this is a remarkable movie, which made me feel physically ill by the end (as it should).