Brilliantly Horrific. Review on Requiem for a dream Movie

Movies about drug addicts often tend to be clichéd with psychic , suicidal and often tantrum throwing characters . So when someone told me that Requiem for a Dream is a good movie , I was a bit skeptical .

At that time Darren Aronofsky was totally unknown to me and I hadn’t seen his previous movie Pi . But anyway after reading rave reviews of the movie one day I watched it and the brilliance of the movie left me

agape & the rawness of the topic left me disgusted at the same time . Since the moment I became a hardcore Aronofsky fan & my opinion didn’t change after watching Pi .

It is based on a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby Jr. The movie revolves around a mother son duo Sara(Ellen

Burstyn) & Harry Goldfarb(Jared Leto) . Sara is a elderly woman living a lonely and depressed life tormented by fond memories of her past . Her husband is dead and her son visits her occasionally . The

son , Harry and his group of friends including Tyrone(Marlon Wayans) & girl friend Marion(Jeniffer Connelly) are addicted to heroin & other narcotics . The storyline is divided in three sub portions

namely summer , fall & winter .

The story begins in summer . The mother is addicted to TV program which advertises a slimming

product . The son is already a drug addict & he becomes a drug dealer along with his friends to earn their own doses of drugs . They enjoy a brief period of joy before the fall arrives . Sara lives in

dream world , plans to become slim by using those slimming pills advertised in the TV program & also aspires to be on the TV show herself . Harry & his girlfriend Marion dream of opening their own

clothing store . But slowly slowly the unavoidable begins to appear . Sara becomes totally addicted to the so called slimming pills . She lives in a world of hallucination loses control of her own life .

Simultaneously Tyrone gets arrested , Harry & Marion runs out of money and could no more get their doses easily . Their relationship also loses the charm of early days . The situation keeps worsening day

by day .By the winter every character is on the brink of death . Sara finds herself in the hospital receiving electric shocks , Tyrone finds himself in jail . Marion becomes a prostot*te to earn her drugs .

But it’s Harry who suffers the most . One of his arms had to be chopped

off after severe infection due to excessive shots of drug injected on the same spot ! The film ends with graphic & horrifying shots of all the four protagonists in disarray .

The film works because of it’s rawness . Specially the scenes where Harry’s arm was amputated

& where Marion performs bizarre sexual (the famous “ass to ass” scene where she shares a dildo with another girl) acts in front of her “customers” leaves very little for imagination . The director handles these scenes with his characteristic style & without any hesitation . Also worth mentioning is his repeated use of montages throughout the movie . The background score also adds to the movie . It is haunting

enough create the right ambiance for such a movie . Other technical aspects like editing & cinematography are also slick & sharp (though I’m no expert) as far as I feel .

In all this is a movie worth watching due to the topic it deals with & due to the way it

does so . All the protagonists have done a brilliant job . But the real star is the director himself . Now I am dying to watch his next movie

“Fountain" .*