Requiem For a Dream

TSPDT Greatest Films #812 Requiem For A Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
This film has been equally adored and equally hated by cinephiles since it came out. From the director of the celebrated The Wrestler and the esoteric The Fountain. He may not manage to show as much talent as a P.T. Anderson for example, but I personally think that he is one of the "young" American directors to follow in the years to come.


With great expectations I started to watch Requiem For A Dream, (you know it's this kind of cult films of recent years like Donnie Darko, Gummo, or Oldboy that I am ashamed of haven't seen yet) so the characters, the addicted son (Jared Leto) his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) his best friend (Marlon Wayans) his no-life mother (Ellen Burstyn) that, by the way, wants to pass on a television show.

This is the kind of film where the multi layers of the story all interconnect with each other and all carry the same message: drugs will just do shit to yourself. We see the many effects and the many causes of addiction in our society. Important issues of our time are treated without any compromise; the cult of the thin body, the hypnotic television shows, the young women that will do anything for money or drug, etc.

Nervous editing and in your face camera angles characterizes this transgenre of the best of David Lynch's eerie atmosphere of contemporary issues with Stanley Kubrick's eye when placing the camera in the most uncommon angle to get a particular shot or impression. Aronofsky's style is hard to define because The Wrestler was shot in a documentary way of simplicity of artifices to put every dramatic aspects on the relations between the characters while in Requiem For A Dream we have many characters that seems to get alone each on his own.

Now that I have seen this contemporary classic I'll need to watch Pi and The Fountain because Requiem For A Dream is a film you can't pass on and forget.


A review by Michaël Parent