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Last year, the brutal, aggresively in-your-face indie flick "Requiem for a Dream" was all but ignored at the Oscars. Rather than recognizing this harrowing look at addiction, the Academy threw away precious statuettes by giving them to "Traffic." Perhaps the fact that the film was released unrated by Artisan (the studio didn't want the NC-17 offered by the MPAA) scared off Academy members. The sad thing about restricting the film to "mature viewers" is that young audiences are most in need of watching it.
(Artisan has released two versions of "Requiem for a Dream" on DVD. The "director's cut" is the one with all the extras. The "R-rated cut" was created for stores like Blockbuster and Hollywood, stores that won't carry unrated films with a "dangerous" reputation. The bastardized DVD, disowned by director/co-writer Darren Aronofsky, comes relatively featureless.)
The film begins with Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) carting off his mother's TV set to a local pawner. He needs the money to get more drugs. Later, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) goes to the pawner to buy back her TV. Apparently, this sort of charade has been going on for years. Sara loves her son too much to shut him out of her life completely. Besides, she's a lonely old woman who needs any company that she can get.
Someone plays a prank on Sara, leading her to think that she's been chosen as a contestant on a TV show. Therefore, she goes on a crash diet of pills. She's addicted to TV, sugar, and dieting in a way that eventually drains her of her sanity. She starts hallucinating and downing even more pills in order to lose weight fast. Meanwhile, there's still no TV appearance in sight, and her doctor doesn't even give a damn about her deteriorating condition...
Harry and his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) start dealing drugs as well as abusing them. Things start off all fine and dandy, but the usual youthful miscalculations, a turf war, and the physical toll of the drugs on their bodies bring little fortune to Harry and Tyrone. Wayans gives a serious performance that took me by surprise. He could have a dramatic career outside of his comic shtick if he wanted.
Jennifer Connelly plays Marion, Harry's girlfriend. She goes along with Harry's lifestyle because she fancies that she loves him, but the script has nothing good in store for her, either. (More on Miss Connelly later).
The film begins on a high in "Summer," sees its characters going through worse in "Fall," and sends everyone off the deep end in "Winter." There is no "Spring." As you can see, the film is all about the downhill.
Aronofsky repeats a lot of the same montages of drug-taking to show the deadly repetitiousness of the "habit," and the fast-forward moments show the restless highs that uses get before they crash back to reality. The film demands repeat viewings simply because of the nifty ways that Aronofsky edits his material.
Ellen Burstyn received numerous accolades during the awards season (late-2000 to early 2001). However, I think that the best performance in the film is the one delivered by Jennifer Connelly. Her performance is an example of what great casting can do for a film. Miss Connelly has had an avid following of male film fans, and Aronofsky uses her status as a sex symbol to show the horrifying degradation to which desperate drug abusers subject themselves.
About halfway through the film, Marion begins prostituting herself. She gets involved in situations that strip more and more layers of her dignity away, and her story arc is the saddest to watch. Ellen Burstyn's character doesn't know what's happening to her, and Harry and Tyrone knowingly throw their lives away. Marion, on the other hand, is caught between being in and out of control, and her love for Harry dooms her. Only the rare film has the guts to damn the "love conquers all" idealism that society often deludes itself into accepting.
It's easy to play totally out-of-control addicts like the ones played by Burstyn and Leto. After all, if your arm looked like Leto's when you wake up one day, you'd be acting pretty ****ed up, too. It's more difficult to suggest the different shadings of a nice girl who still has the capacity to choose her next step in life plunging into the depraved world that ultimately wrecks Marion. The brutality of what happens to Marion and Connelly's bravery in playing the character put Steven Soderbergh/Stephen Gaghan/Erika Christensen of "Traffic" to shame for their mild-mannered, even "genteel," posturings.
Video:
The film arrives on DVD with a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen video transfer. Because of the visual tricks that Aronofsky employs, the video is a bit hard to grade. Fast-forwards introduce resolution/scan line problems, and the graininess of the film stock used by the crew often darken scenes beyond "expected" light levels. However, when the action settles down (relatively speaking), you can see that there are little-to-no digital artifacts. This is a quality, near-great transfer.
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[release]6532[/release]