Warning: No plot spoilers in this review. OK, there's a New
Yorker Jewish lady hooked on diet pills.
There are no heroes in this film and that's exactly the point of it.
Darren Aronofsky, better known for his directorial debut with PI, gives
the audience a audiovisual tour-de-force of the underbelly of drug
addiction. Requiem for a Dream is a horror film about evading reality and
the consequences of irrationality. Unlike other drug films (Pulp Fiction,
Trainspotting, Baby Jane Doe), the drug use and users are not
glamourized and each character descends into systematic self-destruction.
"Requiem" is put together in three acts: Summer, Fall and Winter. There is no
Spring, as to symbolize that each character's happiness is in their
past.
Aronofsky captures the cinematic essence of fear and pity. As Aristotle
wrote in his Rhetoric, what causes us to feel fear is what causes us to
feel pity when it happens to another. In this manner, "Requiem" is a
modern greek tragedy in form and style. Aronofsky knows what provokes
fear and what dissipates it, except that he doesn't. It is up to you to
let it dissipate, but the images aren't meant to go away so easily.
In spite of having a bigger budget than PI, Aronofsky utilizes low
budget ingenuity to pick locations and props to maximize the already great
performances by the cast. Aronofsky directs from direct experience of
his surroundings and Requiem could be considered a second chapter of
what could easily become a trilogy around his native Brooklyn. He has an
endless palette of camera angles, split screens and bizarre colorization
that along with a harrowing score by the Kronos Quartet conveys the
madness that each character descends into as their lives spin downwards
into living hells of their own creation.
This movie is indicative of the cultural chaos of our age.
This movie is categorizes as an "art" movie. I was under the assumption
that this was a horror movie because implicit philosophy was
terrifying. It attacked "society" (which stands for GOP cliches), denounced any
form of certainty, and portrays man as a medieval rat. The implicit
feeling is here: (We are all fucked, in a fucked up world. You can't
blame drug users, they're innocent. You're just as miserable as a drug
addict, so you have no right to judge.) The theme of this movie is
entirely based on Christian dogma and unabashed modernist aesthetics. There
is no hero, no coherent plot, no thought, just floating sequences of
vulgar streetcorner scenarios. If art is a projection of what man
"should be," then this movie teaches that you are a hopeless, ignorant
sinner.
I cannot in any way find justification for calling this movie "good".
By what standard?
This film was like an art-house remake of some
sensationalistic after-school special - THIS is what will happen if YOU do DRUGS.
This film shows humanity at its most depraved, helpless and pitiful - not
an objectivist movie in my book.
