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The hopes and dreams of four ambitious people are shattered when their drug addictions begin spiralling out of control.
Ellen Burstyn: Sara Goldfarb
From Darren Aronofsky, Requeim for a Dream is his most disturbing, most crushingly shocking work yet.
Ellen Burstyn is fantastic as the lonely Sara Goldfarb. Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans equally convincing via beautiful desperate acting.
Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis (from Pi) also had brief cameo roles in this. I really felt that there is a bond between a Director and his actors when they reuse them in films; It shows comfortability and flows. Shows me there is a good working relationship between everyone working on the project.
Director Darren Aronofsky also cleverly requested of Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans to avoid sex and sugar for a period of 30 days in order to better understand an overwhelming craving. This obviously boosts and gives their performances a more realistic edge, this is painfully, achingly real.
The whole film has all the composites of people clinging onto hope yet ultimately spiralling downwards into their worst realizations.
Beautifully filmed, clever uses of photography and image segments. Split screens of characters talking, drug using/tablet taking, surreal visions of TV show hosts in motion and a surreal, mutant fridge coming to life! Complete madness; The effect of pharmaceutical drugs not just illegal ones is shown.
During one scene in which Ellen Burstyn is hallucinating, her entire apartment is taken apart piece by piece as though it was the set of a television show. Several crewmembers of the mock television show pass Burstyn in her chair, including a man carrying a clip board with the Greek letter/mathematical symbol Pi on the back - a genius reference to Darren Aronofsky's first film.
This film is simply masterful work; The mood beginning vibrant and full of life, energy, spontaneity and spunk...Then gradually the piece becomes full of despair and crushing reality. Not for the faint of heart or audiences via a squeamish disposition.
Requiem For A Dream teaches us, shows us, we must give up our false hopes, quit our obsessive habits, and to lessen our need for drugs, before its too late to do so. Watching this film will put you off drugs for life and rightly so. A film that is so fast paced it makes your heart race, so cringe worthy, so real; An emotional pounder via synaptic shocking proportions.
Adapted from the book by Hubert Selby Jr, whom also worked on the screenplay, Requiem for a Dream definitely makes me want to go and find this book immediately.
The music by Clint Mansell is also a blessing; Wait for the revelation emotion breaking ending with the theme song playing to elevate the visuals to heavenly spheres.
Cleverly Requiem meaning essentially death is the story of human nature and how if we let our impulses and desires control everything we do, they will ultimately destroy us. Sex is a drug, acid and narcotics are drugs, prescription pills are drugs, and the biggest drug of all; Life. Brutal, unrelenting and unafraid to take drastic measures to get across these messages. This is a truthful vision of life and death; of ourselves and the biggest dream of all; Our lives.
10/10
