Review of Requiem for a Dream (2000) by Kenneth L — 01 Jan 2014

Drugs are bad, m'kay?

This might be the most visceral and intense movie about drug addiction ever made, and could definitely be used to ward people off of ever wanting to do drugs. However, that's about all it is: a painful, hard to watch portrait of degradation that, while exceedingly well-made and well-acted, doesn't say much beyond, "Look how horrible this is!" There's nothing wrong with the film being that simple in its intention, but I didn't find it quite as thought-provoking as some of Darren Aronofsky's later, somewhat more ambiguous films like The Wrestler and Black Swan.

The plot is simple: Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) gets addicted to diet pills and to a horrible TV game show. Her son Harry (Jared Leto), his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly), and his friend (Marlon Wayans) are all addicted to heroin. Things are bad when the movie starts, and get progressively worse.

Ellen Burstyn is definitely astounding in this movie; her thoroughly vanity-free performance is one of the best and saddest I've seen in a long time. She was nominated for an Oscar for it, and probably should have won. Leto, Connelly, and Wayans are all really good too, each of them managing to convey a certain decency that would possibly give these characters happy lives were it not for their ruinous addictions. It's too bad Wayans has stuck to bottom-of-the-barrel comedies ever since this movie, as he really was decent here.

Darren Aronofsky is a uniquely powerful filmmaker who knows, perhaps better than anyone else currently working, how to put you directly into the minds and subjective experiences of characters in desperate physical and psychological straits. He pulled back from this tactic slightly with The Wrestler to present a more objective view of that character, but in Pi, Black Swan, and this film, he's unbelievably good at conveying how the characters feel and think through his use of camera angles, camera movements, lenses, sound effects, and editing. This is one of the most thoroughly montage-oriented movies since Eisenstein. However, all of this extraordinary technique is ultimately put in service of a very simple message: drug addiction will ruin your life. That's really about all that the movie has to say, and while it says it clearly and forcefully, it isn't quite as complex or interesting as I perhaps hoped it would be.