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Since I don’t like to get into plot too much in the intro, I’ll stop right there. What we have here is a film not necessarily about drugs, but about addictions. We have Harry, Tyrone, and Marion living the “good life”: shooting up, buying drugs cheap, and selling it for a much higher profit. And then we have Sara, a single, lonely old woman seemingly confined to the walls of her apartment building, other than her near army of elderly “friends”.
One day, Sara receives a phone call telling her she’s won a sweepstakes that is to put her on TV and that they’ll call to tell her when she’ll need to be ready. At first, she disregards it. But then, with the television at her side, her delusions of grandeur motivate her to fit into that old red dress in her closet. When a diet fails to show results, a friend recommends her to a doctor who gives Sara a series of diet pills, four different kinds each day that should limit the want for food.
While these pills do their immediate job, Sara becomes fierce enemies with her very own refrigerator, and is told to get off the pills by her son (who happens to know what he’s talking about in this area). He tells her this regardless of his hypocrisy: he is doing drugs all the while.
What we have here is an enthralling film that doesn’t just tell a story, it makes us part of a story. For my part, it took me places I’d rather not go, and made me feel things I’d rather not feel. However, I see this as a triumph, not a failure, because films that are great pull at your emotions. “Requiem for a Dream” most certainly did that.
The film, as I said, is about addictions. Sara’s is the television and refrigerator, and becomes her pills. Tyrone’s is heroin, sex, and money. Marion’s is Harry, heroin, sex, and money. Harry’s is the same story. But what all of them are addicted to what seems to be happiness, which in turn, becomes disaster. All of them want so much to be happy, but they look for it in all the wrong places causing catastrophic events.
To describe this film, I must tell you how I felt about it as a person, not as a critic. I felt that this film was pervasively disturbing. I felt that every shot was there for a purpose, which was to show either a feeling of a character or a consequence of something a character does. It’s incredibly graphic, not bothering to insinuate. It takes grasp early on, when you meet the main characters, but its clench is at a scene that ultimately becomes the third act of the film. And these characters are so believable, so easy to understand.
What is happening in entertainment right now is that they are showing us drug use and sex, but they’re not showing the consequences. This is debatable, but I truly think that if this film was showed in classrooms in schools, it would have a better effect than the cartoons about drugs I watched in the D.A.R.E. program. What I witnessed made me cringe, and that’s a thing hard to accomplish. Let’s just say that cartoon marijuana never made me cringe.
As for the performances, all I can say is flawless. Marlon Wayans, Jennifer Connelly, and Jared Leto are incredible. But Ellen Burstyn gives one of the best performances I have ever seen. It made me laugh, it nearly made me cry, and it truly broke my heart. Burstyn is perfect.
There are a select few films that are so offensive to me that I get close to turning it off. “A Clockwork Orange” was one. “The Last Temptation of Christ” was another. “Requiem” is on that list now. I was deeply offended watching some of the scenes...but sometimes, that’s what it takes to get a point across. Never before have I been so torn on a film, and how to rate it.
“Requiem for a Dream” took me on an adventure for an hour and forty minutes. It was an adventure that taught and reached out, while making me not want to watch. It paced onward with disturbing power and furious motion. And, more importantly, it made me never want to see or use a drug for as long as I live. While that’s encouraging, I was profoundly affected by this film. And as for now, I’m debating whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. *** ˝