Getting up close and personal with Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky’s 2000 film about drugs and other addictions, is both an immersive and a repulsive ordeal.
USA
5*
Director:
Darren Aronofsky
Screenwriter:
Darren Aronofsky
Director of Photography:
Matthew Libatique
Running time: 100 minutes
François Truffaut famously said that any anti-war film nearly always turns into a pro-war film. He was among those who had lived through the trauma of the Second World War and wanted to consign all of the war’s evils to the dustbin of history, not project them onto a giant screen. But many directors, anxious to prove themselves, have other ideas and often relish in showing us epic, gory spectacles that are entertaining, not nauseating.
The same tends to be true of films that deal with drug use: All too frequently, the feeling of immersion created by the sounds and the images is a warm cocoon rather than a frightening shroud.
Nearly two decades after its 2000 release, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, the exception that proves the rule, remains a nightmarish vision of addiction – one that excels at bringing us so close to the drugs we can practically feel our gorge rising with revulsion. The film uses rapid-fire editing to signal its characters’ broken attention spans, fish-eye lenses to distort their already warped perspectives on life around them and a devastating score by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet to bring the titular requiem vividly to life.
In the story, adapted from Hubert Selby Jr.’s 1978 novel of the same name, the 20-something Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) regularly pawns his mother Sara’s (Ellen Burstyn) television set for money to buy hard drugs. Sara, an elderly widow living in an apartment in Coney Island, is spending more and more of her time in front of the TV, watching game shows. Her favourite has a studio audience roaring with unbridled passion every time Tappy Tibbons, the charismatic host, energetically intones, “We-e-e-e-e got a winner!” But she is growing lonely from seeing her son so seldom. Out of the blue, she receives a phone call informing her she has been selected as a contestant on one of her favourite shows. She decides to go on a diet, but when the results are too slow in coming, she starts taking questionable diet pills that steadily drive her to the edge of psychosis.
Along the way, Harry’s girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly), dreams of opening her own clothing store, and his best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), wants to make his mother proud by living up to his promise that one day he’d do everything he can to “make it”.
But Requiem for a Dream has no patience for the dreams of people whose focus is diluted by their weakness for drugs of various kinds. The three “chapters” in the story are titled as three seasons, but it is telling that it starts with summer and ends with winter: There is no spring, no blossoming of new life; there is only an agonising, seemingly ineluctable downward spiral. By the time the closing credits roll, everyone’s dreams have not only come crashing down but shattered into a million pieces, with the shards cutting the dreamers to the bone.
What makes this particular film rise above its innumerable counterparts that have been made about drugs and addiction? It is full of colour, yet grim as hell. The camera is free as a bird, even when it depicts characters who cannot escape their fates. And oddly enough, instead of pulling us closer, the close-ups end up alienating us from the objects of their focus. Aronofsky’s stroke of genius is to use the cinema’s tools of intimacy against us and redefine the potential of old conventions.
The close-ups are repulsive, and the alienation we experience is antithetical to the intimacy we usually expect from this visual approach, which yields a crippled euphoria – a synthesis that is far superior to its constituent parts.
Although best summarised by the simultaneous presence of light and darkness in the title, this dialectical triad is most prominently on display in the climactic sequence: As the music’s rhythm builds to a crescendo, the pace of the cuts quickens and shots from all four storylines (one of which includes an orgy) alternate faster and faster until breaking point, when various liquids are released and the screen suddenly fades to white. The insinuation is that the film itself is having an orgasm, but instead of lust and desire, the entire sequence is filled with despair and dismay.
What we see is repulsive, and yet, because we are so close to the action, we cannot disconnect from it, which sends us into a state of vertigo that also hints at the characters’ mental turmoil. Aronofsky’s kaleidoscope of visual approaches suits the material perfectly and even includes an implicit religious component. Many of the images, particularly those that show us someone curled up in the foetal position, are overhead shots, and at the bleakest of moments, the camera pulls back even farther. It’s not a stretch to interpret these images as God’s point of view. However, there is no intervention, and the implication is that divine indifference gradually turns to divine disregard. The emotional impact on the viewer, who is always open to empathising with the characters, is absolutely devastating.
It’s as if Sara, Harry, Marion and Tyrone are all screaming into a void, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” But no one answers, and they continue their plunge into the abyss. Perhaps it is no coincidence that, by the time he hits rock-bottom, Harry has a bloody hole in his arm. Every time he shoots up, we get the same extreme close-ups in almost identical sequences: among others, someone flicks a lighter, a syringe injects, a pupil dilates, and blood cells surge inside a vein. We hear a gasp of anticipation and then a sigh of ecstasy.
But the repetition, instead of providing comfort and security, is emblematic of a vicious circle from which the characters cannot escape. This sequence of hard drug use spills over into Sara’s life as well, as we see her popping pills in extreme close-ups, which ultimately leads to one of the most upsetting parts of the film: Sara’s hallucination of a rumbling refrigerator that seeks to tempt her into rejecting the purple, red, orange and green pills.
Sara, whose voice just about breaks with emotion every time she opens her mouth, is the central focus of the viewer’s empathy. The scene between her and Harry, in which she levels with her son about her obsession and her loneliness, is not just heartfelt but downright heart-breaking. She is vulnerable but determined to keep going, no matter what, and she keeps on smiling through the tears.
This interaction includes perhaps the best performance of Ellen Burstyn’s career. It becomes all the more poignant when we witness Harry realise that his mother’s situation is as sad and hopeless as his own. But despite his love for Sara, he is incapable of preventing her from going down the same path as him. It would take a miracle to escape from this desperation, but the world of this film is utterly devoid of miracles.
Requiem for a Dream is unrelentingly bleak, and none of the major characters manages to escape the calamities their addictions inflict on them. Artistically impeccable and deeply affecting, it is not only the most brutal of Aronofsky’s illustrious career but also easily one of the top movies of the past two decades and infinitely superior to the much more conventional Traffic, the other big drug production from 2000, which walked away with multiple Academy Awards that year.
This is an anti-drug film that never once runs the risk of showing the bright side of its sordid material. Many movies depict their action and spectacle on a scale that ends up stimulating the viewer on the level of the senses by rousing us instead of pulverising our emotions. But Requiem for a Dream starts with its heel already firmly planted on our skulls and keeps pressing down firmly until the very last moments, when our life just about flashes before our eyes.
And this is exactly as it should be.
“We-e-e-e-e got a winner!”