Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream (2000) is generally called the hardest film about addiction to sit through, and it earns that reputation. It is adapted from Hubert Selby Jr's novel. There are four people: Harry, his girlfriend Marion, his friend Tyrone, and Harry's mother Sara. The first three use heroin. Sara starts taking diet pills, on prescription, dreaming of appearing on a television show. The cleverest thing in it is that parallel. The street drug and the prescription arrive at the same place, and Sara's collapse is faster than anyone's. Ellen Burstyn's performance is the centre of the film and was nominated for an Oscar. Aronofsky builds a formal language. Every time someone takes a drug it is shown in the same rapid cut sequence: pupil, needle, blood, sound. The scene becomes a ritual and gets shorter each time it repeats. He also mounts the camera to the actor's body, so the background moves while the face stays still. Clint Mansell's score, recorded with the Kronos Quartet, took on a life independent of the film and was used in trailers for years. The last ten minutes intercut all four stories and the title becomes clear there. It runs 102 minutes. Who should not watch it, and this belongs first: it contains drug use, sexual exploitation, the loss of a limb, and psychiatric sequences. Most people who watch it once never open it again. Who it is for: formally bold cinema, Aronofsky, and hard drama.