You've made your point

Rating: Null/10 (23 November 2000)

Hulbert Selby Jr.'s underrated "Last Exit to Brooklyn" portrayed self-destructive characters with no escape from their eventual fate. In Selby's "Requiem for a Dream", director Darren Aronofsky revisits the same territory with an engrossing cast and an ingenious array of camera tricks that work up to a point before things clearly get out of hand. Whereas "Last Exit" knew when to back off, in "Requiem", we are tortured with excesses that overstate the premise of the film. The final nerve-racking denouement ruined this film just as a similar technique doomed the over-the-top "Natural Born Killers". It didn't have to be this way. "Requiem" built up the four main characters (Sarah Goldfarb who imagines being on the same infomercial she is constantly watching, her son Harry, girlfriend Marion, and buddy Tyrone who imagine raking in riches from selling drugs if only they weren't hooked on it) as they each ride the wave of their addictions before crashing violently down. It used split screen to show the devious son trying to steal his mother's TV while she is locked in her closet afraid to come out; or another time to show the sensual caressing touches of Marion and Harry. It used the imagined world to show Harry and Ty toying around with a policeman that they could not do in real life or Marion putting a fork into the hand of lecherous Arnold when she really had to submit to his grasp. And in the case of Sarah, the imagined and the real became virtually the same when the commanding refrigerator dictated all her actions. We even see rapid sequencing used to show the mundane act of getting up in the morning or Sarah swallowing up her skimpy diet of eggs and grapefruit or the final, maddening act when all four go down the sewer in quick succession. Ellen Burstyn's Sarah comes across initially as interesting and appealing, then as sympathetic, and finally as repulsive. She deserved better. She must have identified with Linda Blair from "The Exorcist" after the stunning makeover from a prim eccentric widower to a drug-crazed, fiendish looking psychotic. Sadly, "Requiem" went beyond sensibilities to try to make a point. After a while, you wanted to tell director Aronofsky that enough is enough.