When Ambition is driven by Addiction ... Prepare Yourself for Alienation ...

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2011)

"What's the meaning of life?" I candidly asked a friend. His answer resonated in my mind as the truest words of wisdom: "To give it a meaning" ... and it's true because it applies to every human being. Call them dreams, plans or ambitions, we all give a personal answer to the eternal "Why?". It can be selfish or altruistic, whatever we do should serve a purpose. Even the devoted mother lives for her children, even the bum drinks to escape from his reality and die like the religious fanatic dreams to meet God in the Holy Heaven Dark, mystical or optimistic, we're all driven by dreams.
But if I can use a metaphor to define life, I would say that the road is the meaning, the destination is the ambition, we're the car, and the gas is nothing but  addiction, addictions driving our lives in order to fulfill our ambitions, and if there's one film that perfectly illustrated this, it's Darren Aronofky's "Requiem For a Dream". This masterpiece relates in spell-binding visuals, the stories of four protagonists that basically went "out of gas", and exploded the car. It's life in microcosm, in its most pessimistic approach  and the soul of this movie is Sara Goldfarb, portrayed by Ellen Burstyn, in one of the greatest female performances ever.
Because living without a meaning is synonym of waiting for death, Sara Goldfarb embodies the tragedy of people with empty lives. Old, lonely, they try to fill their routine with friends, food, anything that could "give it a meaning". For Sara, it's TV, especially a creepy reality TV show that gives ordinary people a unique opportunity to be acclaimed and to make a surprise to their beloved ones. For Sara, TV is just a filler, and Harry, his son, played by Jared Leto, is the only precious thing she still has in this world. But when she receives a convincing phone call inviting her to the show, her new objective is to get thin to fit in her beautiful red dress, to be the prettiest, to be a "winner", like the previous participants.
Being thin and pretty, will drive her life until it turns to obsession, the more she'll try to get thin, the more extreme will be the means. Sara's challenge will be to be a "winner", a dangerous catchphrase indirectly underlining the fallacious hypocrisy, that "the others" are losers. But a loser, Sara is not because she has a dream. In a heartbreaking speech to her son, she explains that she wants to be loved, to have the chance to be someone, at least for once. Who can blame her? Not Harry anyway, whose addiction to drugs will also lead to the worst.
Harry wants to build a future with Marion, his girlfriend, Jennifer Connelly, while Tyron his friend, Marlon Wayans, also needs money to help his mother. These stories all have a common link, a noble ambition driven by a dangerous addiction. We all know they're doomed. The beautiful music of "Requiem For a Dream" inhabits the tragedy from the start, in fact, the third of the film's emotional impact is incarnated by "Lux Aeterna" unforgettable violin's theme, one of the most impacting and iconic scores of the last decade.
Combined with the music, the editing created the feeling of redundancy all through the film, the repetitions of the same shots with the eyes' dilatation, the opening of the box letter, the colored weight-loss pills etc., highlight that addiction is only a dangerous routine replacing a monotonous one. The editing is so captivating we predict this hellish spiral will go crescendo until reaching a breaking point. Sara always found the box letter empty, she got so used to her pills, she starts taking one, two, three... at a time
Additions supposedly driving the ambitions of meaningless lives create other habits within the addiction. It's as if without them, we condemn ourselves to get sucked into the normality, and prevent ourselves from being what we want to be, which inevitably leads to alienation. Because wanting to be different is also the best way to become our caricature, or worse. In the incredible hallucinatory scene, Sara imagines herself laughing at her own image as if she wanted in fact to be so different she would be among the one who laughs at the kind of people she is. Hubert Selby's book is so ahead of its time it explored the alienation of a society where we want to please people so bad we lose self-respect.
That's what happens when you get dependent of your dreams, you kill your inner self to become more socially acceptable  because when you destroy your inner self in order to construct a false image, you ultimately lose everything  whether you want to be famous, thin, sexy, popular, rich, whatever  you fail, you're the ultimate loser.
And the four stories are four failures. Sara, let herself down in a pathetic tear-jerking breakdown in the TV studio, Marion started selling her body to get the heroine, while Tyron and Harold tried to find the drugs everywhere until they got finally caught. These four destinies finally converged in one of the most vertiginous climactic montages ever, illustrating how an addiction can make you lose at least four precious things. Sara lost her mind, Harry lost his infected arm in a particularly disturbing shot, Marion lost her dignity, and Tyron his freedom. Reason, body, dignity, freedom, the pillars of lives that addictions, driving ambitions or not, can destroy  and poor Sara paid the biggest price.
So, this film put my friend's answer into perspective, if "life's meaning is to give it a meaning", I guess we should just remember the words of John Lennon : "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."