For those of you who don't know (I imagine most of you do), I have struggled with weight issues my entire life. In fact, it was not until my senior year of high school that I began legitimately attempting to lose weight. I was addicted to food. And as as result of my addiction, I had high blood pressure, no energy and was on the verge of developing diabetes among other horrible things. Now, almost four year after the fact, I am nearly 100 pounds lighter and in a much better state of body and mind.
Addiction is not simply when someone gets hooked on drugs or alcohol. Granted, those are the most well known and the quickest trains to devastation, but they are not the only forms. I was addicted to food and soda, some people are addicted to sex, others to gambling and some people are addicted to the internet. The point is, addiction covers a much broader area than most people like to think and can be just as devastating in every case. So, what does this have to do with a film blog? Well, it just so happens that the film I'm here to talk about tackles these very themes.
Darren Aronofsky's 2000 film REQUIEM FOR A DREAM tells the story of four individuals, Harry (Jared Leto), his mother Sara (Ellen Burstyn), his girlfriend Marion and his best friend Tyrone (Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans) as their lives spiral out of control in the wake of the horrors of addiction. Harry, Marion and Tyrone are all heroin addicts, living hand-to-mouth, sending all the money they attain (one way or another) quickly rushing into their veins. Sara is not the innocent voice of reason, however. She's as addicted to food and television as the others are to heroin, wasting her days away in her recliner watching infomercials hosted by Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald) and his chanting chorus.
Though many critics have called REQUIEM a "drug film," I would disagree. While the story of Harry, Marion and Tyrone is the standard heroin story reminiscent of Danny Boyle's TRAINSPOTTING, the inclusion of Ellen Burstyn's performance as Sara shows that this film is more than a tale about the evils of heroin. Instead, it becomes an almost clinical (and certainly brutal) representation of how addiction of any kind infiltrates a person's life, becomes the only thing that matters and, in this case, completely destroys the hopes and dreams of all four of the main characters. And these are not dreams that seem impossible from the start.
In the grand scheme of things, they are modest at most. Harry wants to pick himself up and start a real, legitimate life with Marion. Marion likewise wants to be with Harry and start a clothing business. Tyrone wants to get himself off the streets and make his mother proud. Sara wants to be a guest on her favorite TV show and tell the world about her husband Seymour and her son Harry, wear the red dress that she wore for Harry's graduation (her husband's favorite) and she wants to be proud of her son. The true sadness that results from the film is the knowing that all of these dreams could have been accomplished if not for the vice grip that addiction took on the quartet's life.
In the grand scheme of things, they are modest at most. Harry wants to pick himself up and start a real, legitimate life with Marion. Marion likewise wants to be with Harry and start a clothing business. Tyrone wants to get himself off the streets and make his mother proud. Sara wants to be a guest on her favorite TV show and tell the world about her husband Seymour and her son Harry, wear the red dress that she wore for Harry's graduation (her husband's favorite) and she wants to be proud of her son. The true sadness that results from the film is the knowing that all of these dreams could have been accomplished if not for the vice grip that addiction took on the quartet's life.
The way Aronofsky shoots the film does nothing but add to the themes of his work. The early use of split screen allows for the viewer to see the actions of both characters but also works to show how although they are in the same immediate area, these characters are unequivocally alone. Would these four even have interactions with one another if not for the ever present addiction? While there seems to be genuine affection between Harry and Marion, it could easily be argued that they would have never met, let alone formed a relationship if not for their mutual heroin addiction. The same could be said for Harry and Tyrone, whose only shared interest, other than their addiction, appears to be an apparent love of music mixing. As for Harry and Sara, their only interactions in the film (thinking back, I only remember two real ones in the entire hour and forty minutes) are drug related. In the opening scene Harry is only at his mother's apartment to steal her TV (a regular occurrence we find out later) and pawn it for drug money. The second and final interaction between the two (apart from one final dream sequence) is the recompense for the former event as we see Harry apologizing for the theft by buying Sara a brand new television using the money that he and Tyrone had made during their brief stint in the illegal drug trade.
In addition to these split screens, the cuts in the film are astounding. Early on in the film (during the Summer) the scenes are longer as the characters are still relatively stable and lucid. As the film progresses through the Fall and Winter however, the characters sink deeper and deeper into the filth of their addictions and the cuts become more and more rapid, adeptly presenting their minds as they become more and more erratic and delusional. The quick cuts that take place during the actual ingestion of the drugs is also rapid and very closely shot. I would argue that while the closeness represents the importance of the drugs themselves, the quick nature of the cuts is representative of how quickly the drugs take effect on the respective user and, consequently, how quickly the effects depart, leaving the user wondering from where the money for the next hit will come.
Overall, and I can see that my thoughts are not as well described or organized as I'd hoped (perhaps a product of the film itself), I want to say that the film as a film is as great as the film as an experience (if that makes any sense at all). The nature in which Aronofsky shoots the picture combined with the score that has been praised exorbitantly make you feel like you're experiencing the effects of addiction along with the characters. It's an incredibly sobering (no pun attending) look into the perils of addiction for anyone, whether you've experienced the disease or not.
That being said, the film as a film is also impeccable. The way the film tells the story of these four characters in a way that is extremely compelling while not allowing you true empathy with any of them is magnificent. In that same vein (again, no pun intended), way the film contrasts the close, distorted and uncomfortable character point of views with the distant, separated view of the outside world is immensely effective. This contrast continues with the dream sequences that display a world of beauty and joy, two elements that the film is devoid of otherwise. As a scene with Tyrone touches on, the drugs create a type of window through which the characters can view their dreams, a better world and a better life. But like windows, the drugs only show you this. You are still separate from it and, as we see time and again, a glimpse is all it is. Eventually the drapes will be drawn and you will be back in reality.
I will end this post with the ending the film, which is perhaps the most impressive part. Apart from being a major accomplishment in editing and directing, it is the culmination of the themes presented throughout the film. It is here that we see the end result of addiction: Harry in a prison hospital, his heroin ravaged arm amputated due to massive infection, Marion devolved into an employee of a pimp who forces her to perform in lesbian orgies for her fix, Tyrone in the same prison as Harry, though instead of being in the hospital he is forced to combat intense labor and intense emotional abuse from racist prison guards, and Sara, involuntarily committed to a psychological hospital having lost complete touch with reality and now subject to regular electro-convulsive treatments after her diet pill addiction had left her immune to the classic forms of treatment. And though separated physically, they are all connected: found at the end in some form of the fetal position, utterly destroyed.
In the final moments of the film, we are taken into one of Sara's hallucinations. And it is this hallucination that acts as the message of the entire film personified. It is the collective dream for which the film is a requiem. Sara, vivacious in the red dress, is finally a guest on Tappy's show. She gets to tell the world about her husband Seymour and is ultimately joined by her successful and married son Harry. The two embrace and we as viewers are left with a beautiful image. The thing is, that's all it is. An image. It's an illusion of what could've been. This is what they could have had, the film says. But addiction has made this nothing but a crushing view of the joy that could have been had they all had the one thing that all addicts desperately need, but only few have: the ability to say no.
