Ooh...Dreamy Repose

Author's Rating:

Pros: Acting, Story, Direction, Atmosphere

Cons: Two Words--Jennifer Connelly

The Bottom Line: 
The only version you'll probably find is the edited one--since the unedited one was borderline NC-17.

Author's Review
Movies are great tools. They make you feel emotional (sometimes) much more than words on a sheet of paper. They are wonderful things that can sometimes be terrible, but can most times be thought-provoking and visually appealing. In Requiem For A Dream’s case, it’s the latter.

Dream tells the story of a middle-aged widow named Sarah living in an apartment spending her time watching day time television. After a long time of writing letters and post cards to the show, she finally gets accepted as a contestant on the show. Excited that she’s going to be on TV, she tries on a red dress that takes her down memory lane as being the one she wore to her son, Harry’s, graduation with her deceased husband. It’s cut short, however, when it turns out the dress doesn’t quite fit.

One of her yuppie friends refers her to a doctor that offers those miracle treatments where you take pills to lose weight quicker than regular exercise and diet. After a few days of being on the dreaded grapefruit, hard-boiled egg, and coffee diet, she gladly tries the pills–and she feels wonderful! But soon, she gets adjusted to the pills and increases her dosage. Many problems arise.

At the same time, her son Harry and his girlfriend, Marrion, are living together and are using as well as selling dope with their co-hort Tyrone. But after Tyrone narrowly escapes being shot while meeting with other drug dealers, Harry’s girlfriend selling herself for money, and Harry starting to get a mysterious infection in his arm, they decide to rethink their careers.

The movie is really intense. In fact, the climax of the film is probably the most emotional and disturbing one I have ever seen–and that is a big feat. By the end of the film I was emotionally drained and I was physically shaking. But it was still a great movie.

Darren Aronofsky is perhaps one of the big new directors of my time. His first movie, Pi, was a bit weird, but from a technical standpoint as well as the awesome performances, it was a wonderful movie. But with the release of Requiem For A Dream in 2000, he released a spotless movie that’s amazing in every way. Aronofsky’s unorthodox camera angles and unpredictable plot tilts make the movie fantastic to watch because you never see what’s coming.

The performances are even more terrific. Jared Leto, who is the son, is great in the movie. I have only seen him in supporting roles, but he does a great job carrying a lot of the movie on his shoulders among other great stars like Marlon Wayans and Ellen Burstyn. His performance is very realistic as a junkie/distributer and near the end, it looks as if he’s actually on drugs and disturbed. Marlon Wayans, whom I also liked in The Ladykillers, does a marvelous job in his supporting role as Tyrone. He’s caring and has great onscreen chemistry with Leto, but his lines can sometimes be stereotypical of a young black male.

The two ladies of the movie–Jennifer Connelly and Ellen Burstyn are great...well, Burstyn is. I don’t know what it is, but Connelly annoys the hell out of me. Her acting is robotic and she looks as if she’s bored. I saw House of Sand and Fog (mainly for Sir Ben Kingsley) and she sucked in it (although people said she was good) and she was part of the reason why that Hulk flick sucked so much. She is the only factor of this movie that stinks. Burstyn, however, does a marvelous job as a total incompetent TV viewer, and she transforms her character a lot through the process of the movie before the epic finale. Her role was brilliantly written and expertly performed.

Requiem For A Dream was amazing to watch. Granted, the movie was a little bit hard to follow the first couple of minutes (like Pi), but once you’re into the whole formula, you’ll be having a good time. The director’s weird way of film-making, like the repeating event of every time a character shoots up having to watch the drug start to corkscrew its way into the veins as well as watching the pupils dilate. The film-making techniques in the movie were very influential to me (being a guy who’s starting to get into making movies himself).

I know everyone’s talking about how great Memento was (and it was great), but Requiem For A Dream was equally satisfying. When the characters are this moving and the story keeps you in a trance, then you know it’s a good movie. Watching these characters go through things that I myself would never go through, was interesting and it kept me watching to see what would happen next. I think that if you love original movies that are provocative as well as honest then you should check out Requiem.

© Jason Haskins, 2005

“JiggyJay”