Requiem For a Dream

-Story-

A few days ago I watched one of those films that is bleak, disturbing, and just plain leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Requiem For a Dream makes the viewer feel bad about themselves, and made me sincerely wish I could, stop watching at numerous points in the middle. The story follows the lives of four individuals: Harry, Marian, Tyrone, and Harry’s mother, Sarah. They all live on the now basically deserted streets of Coney Island’s Brighton Beach. The setting is drab, but the most depressing aspect of this film is the plot. The story chronicles the shattered lives of these four individuals. They all, over the course of the film, develop serious drug habits and utterly ruin their already pathetic lives. Harry and his friend Tyrone are Heroin addicts, Marian, Harry’s girlfriend, is a heroin, speed and pretty much anything else you could imagine addict too. Harry’s mom gets hooked on diet pills (the cheap kind made primarily of speed), and television. It could be a poignant and sad story of loss and self-destruction; but it just ends up awful. This film made me feel bad about myself, bad about the world, and very bad about these sad excuses for people. Maybe it’s because I can’t imagine myself ever letting my life get so suckie that I’d go in for Heroin or any of their other crap, but I think even if I was a junkie on the street watching this film I’d probably still hate it. You can’t sympathise with these characters because their spiral into personal hell is so totally avoidable. You can go ahead and disagree with me on this, I know people are pretty passionate about society abetting their shitty lives, but screw that. These people deserve what they get.

This film was disturbing, it was unpleasant; and I guess that’s what the director, and cinematographer wanted. Some of the sequences showing these people’s perceptions on or off drugs was kind of interesting; cinematically speaking, but on the whole the look was dark and aggravating. Why do I need to see crap like this?

This film was directed by the same guy who did 'Pi' (written like the mathematical symbol), Darren Aronofsky. And I’ve got to say, I did like this better than that piece of crap, but not by much. This one at least didn’t give me nightmares. I guess he’s going more mainstream, you know, trying to tell an actual story or something. I guess he’s trying to say something about addiction, or maybe about how bad life is, I’m not really sure. I feel a bit badly here. I know I’m not being objective with this film, maybe it’s got some great secret message for the world. I know that some people loved this film, but I just can’t wrap my head round it. I hated this. I suppose, hating a film like this means it succeeded on some level, but I don’t really think that’s what Aronofsky was going for. Obviously, I feel pretty strongly about my disgust; so even if that wasn’t what they wanted I’m gonna have to give it points for that. And hey, if I we’re a director I’d rather have some people hate my film than have everyone think it was just so-so.

The actor’s do a pretty decent job overall. Jared Leto plays Harry, a very young looking Jennifer Connelly plays Marian, and Marlon Waynes plays Tyrone,and Ellen Burstyn plays Harry's mom. I'd normally here try to find out more about the film but I think it’d be better for my psyche to just leave this film alone from here on. Other than the fact that Marlon Waynes isn’t really convincing in anything but comedies, all the actors, as I said above, did an admirable job. I mean, hey, I did manage to hate them. That’s something, right? I believed enough in their work to be sickened seeing Leto shooting up into his diseased and blackened arm, or Connelly be reduced to having sex in a room full of guys just to score some dope. I know it’s screwed up, but I guess they did well for what they had.

I know I’m not very objective here. I know that this review is more just me exorcising some pent up frustrations at how this film made me feel. I also know that this film would really appeal to some people out there, but I just can’t recommend it. Unless you really want to feel like crap, or try to psychoanalyse the users mindset just stay away from this film.