REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (Artisan) Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Christopher McDonald. Screenplay: Hubert Selby, Jr. and Darren Aronofsky, based on the novel by Selby. Producers: Eric Watson and Palmer West. Director: Darren Aronofsky. MPAA Rating: NC-17 (drug use, sexual situations, nudity, profanity, adult themes, violence) Running Time: 102 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
If it was director Darren Aronofsky's goal to use REQUIEM FOR A DREAM as a variation on A CLOCKWORK ORANGE's Ludivico treatment ... well, mission accomplished. His adaptation of Huber Selby, Jr.'s novel is a dazzling multi-media assault, a tale of degradation and shattered lives that will make you feel as though you need a brain enema to cleanse your memory of its most disturbing images. Aronofsky's singularly inventive visual style, combined with one of the year's most chillingly evocative scores by Clint Mansell and the Kronos Quartet, dares you not to look away, lest you miss something potentially extraordinary. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is arresting, compelling and frequently flat-out horrifying.
So why isn't it one of the best films of the year, if not _the_ best film? Because for all of Aronofsky's stylistic prowess, and all the film's visceral power, this narrative falls into an all-too-common trap: It spells out too much of the subtext, and doesn't trust the viewer to get the point without a good-old fashioned bludgeoning. The story focuses on four characters in search of an exit in Brooklyn. Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) is a widow who spends her days eating chocolates and watching info-mercials in her Coney Island apartment. Her only son Harry (Jared Leto) is a heroin addict who keeps pawning Sara's television to fix himself, his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and best pal Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). Harry and company have a plan to become independent by going into the dealing business themselves, a plan they think will make all their dreams come true. Sara, meanwhile, may have a chance to fulfill her own dream of being a contestant on a TV game show, but first she'll have to lose a lot of weight to get into her favorite red dress -- even if that means taking a few habit-forming diet pills.
During the portion of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM when these characters still have hope that their dreams may come true, it's a dynamic film experience. Aronofsky eschews the typical fetishistic shots of injections, substituting rapid-fire montages to represent the characters' respective fixes. He gets inside the highs and lows, sometimes with sound (a depressant turning words from the television into a gradually slowing record), sometimes with images (a fish-eye lens distorting Sara into a startling grotesquerie). There are brilliant moments both when the film is at its most kinetic (Sara's speed-fuelled cleaning jags) and at its most serene (Harry and Marion sharing a tender split-screen moment in which their physical connection is disturbingly disjointed). As he demonstrated in 1998's PI, Aronofsky is one of the few true visionaries making American movies.
There's style to spare in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, but there's not as much substance as there should be, and what substance there is becomes too blatant in its presentation. Early in the film, an intriguing theme develops as we see Sara indulge in her sweets and self-help TV: Even as she frets over Harry's addiction, it's clear she seeks some mood-altering quick fixes of her own. But Aronofsky spells it out when he has Harry note, "What's mom's fix? Television!" Similarly, a subtle moment in which Sara is given a preferred seat among the women outside her building -- just because she may be on television in the near future -- is underlined by Sara's comment on her royal treatment. Every time REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is on the verge of being about more than its characters' inevitable spiral into agony, it quickly offers the Cliff's Notes version and moves you along to the next moment of personal hell.
And eventually, all those moments of personal hell become wearying. As splendidly acted as REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is -- and every one of the four principals is very good, particularly Burstyn -- it's ultimately a film that pays far more attention to the things drugs does to these people than what it takes away from them. It becomes such a relentless parade of dignity-destroying acts and physical disintegration that the broadly sketched characterizations vanish in the wake of their misery. It conditions you to feel repulsed by what drugs do to these people without allowing you to feel for them as people. This is spectacularly staged and marvelously performed "Just Say No" melodrama -- REEFER MADNESS for the art house set. It's impossible not to get REQUIEM FOR A DREAM's message, and nearly impossible not to applaud the messenger. But after 102 minutes, it feels like you've been strapped into a chair while the message imbeds itself into your pried-open eyeballs.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 dream escapes: 6.
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