Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream is a powerful and extremely disturbing film about the effects of drug abuse on the lives of a few very unhappy people. The story starts at the home of Sara Goldfarb, played by Ellen Burstyn. She is addicted to television and sugar. Her son, Harry is a heroin addict, and she knows it, but she denies it to herself. In her mind, he is successful, running his own business and on the verge of getting married. She loses herself in nights in front of the TV, and days with her friends sitting in a deckchair in the sun. One day, she gets a phone call from some advertising company, and is naively talked into believing that she is going to appear on her favourite game show. She begins obsessing about appearing on the show, and starts a diet. The doctor gives her a whole lot of drugs that are supposed to help her lose weight, but eventually just help her to lose her mind instead. Meanwhile, Harry and his girlfriend Marion, played by Jennifer Connelly, appear happy enough, but only while they're high. They spend most of their time trying to figure out where the next fix is going to come from, and when Harry goes to Florida in search of a drug score, Marion, desperate for money, gets herself into a very dangerous and humiliating situation.

Requiem for a Dream is unlike any other film I've seen in a long time. It reminded me a little of Boogie Nights, in the way it uses powerful music and dramatic editing to lead us to a nerve shattering climax. It has the most effective use of sound and editing I think I've ever seen in a film, proving once again that the picture is only fifty percent of the movie-going experience. I found this film profoundly disturbing, partly because of the way it was filmed, and partly because of the excellent acting. The use of soft focus in Harry's scenes lends a kind of dreamlike quality to his experience, and the way the director speeds up time during happy moments and slows it down during anxious moments actually reflects real life amazingly well. In one very unpleasant scene, the camera is actually attached to Marion as she leaves a horrible sexual encounter and walks out to the street to be sick. It's the closest you can come to actually being that character. This is the kind of film that plays havoc with your heartbeat and adrenaline if you let it, and when I left I was emotionally exhausted.