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REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
The disconnection and disaffection makes nothing fruitful. The sex is non-productive and objectifying. The drugs are destructive and dehumanizing. The relationships are hollow and everyone is alone and lonely, numbing their loneliness with drugs and vacuous dreams: "Someday I will be a Somebody." This is not a movie about drug abuse or junkies or the media or sex, per se. It is a movie that is profoundly about this culture of fragmentation, despondency and isolation.
Review by SIMON REMARK
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(2000)
This page was created on January 31, 2002
This page was last updated on
May 29, 2005
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 Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Screenplay by Hubert Selby Jr. and Darren Aronofsky
Novel by Hubert Selby Jr.
Ellen Burstyn .... Sara Goldfarb
Jared Leto .... Harry Goldfarb
Jennifer Connelly .... Marion Silver
Marlon Wayans .... Tyrone C. Love
Christopher McDonald .... Tappy Tibbons
Louise Lasser .... Ada Marcia
Jean Kurtz .... Rae
Janet Sarno .... Mrs. Pearlman
Suzanne Shepherd .... Mrs. Scarlini
Joanne Gordon .... Mrs. Ovadia
Charlotte Aronofsky .... Mrs. Miles
Produced by
Beau Flynn .... executive producer
Nick Wechsler .... executive producer
Stefan Simchowitz .... executive producer
Ben Barenholtz .... co-executive producer
Eric Watson .... producer
Palmer West .... producer
Scott Franklin .... co-producer
Jonah Smith .... co-producer
Scott Vogel .... co-producer
Randy Simon .... co-producer
Ann Ruark .... line producer
Original music by Clint Mansell
Cinematography by Matthew Libatique
Film Editing by Jay Rabinowitz
MPAA: Rated R (edited version) for intense depiction of drug addiction, graphic sexuality, strong language and some violence.
USA:NC-17 (original rating)
For rating reasons, go to FILMRATINGS.COM, and MPAA.ORG.
Parents, please refer to PARENTALGUIDE.ORG |
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 Composer Clint Mansell made his impact as a soundtrack composer known with his production of the Pi soundtrack. On that disc, the former vocalist for UK group Pop Will Eat Itself melded an abstract 20th-century classical sensibility to electronica with great (and eerie) results. On Requiem for a Dream--the follow-up film from Pi director Darren Aronofsky--Mansell repeats his magic. Here, teamed with the Kronos Quartet--one of the world's foremost (and most progressive) string quartets--Mansell fuses big-beat, ambient, and driving chamber music. The result is a mesmerizing aural complement to an already mesmerizing film. Dark, unpredictable, and thoroughly engrossing. --Jason Verlinde Amazon.com
1. Summer: Summer Overture 2. Summer: Party 3. Summer: Coney Island Dreaming 4. Summer: Party 5. Summer: Chocolate Charms 6. Summer: Ghosts of Things to Come 7. Summer: Dreams 8. Summer: Tense 9. Summer: Dr. Pill 10. Summer: High on Life 11. Summer: Ghosts 12. Summer: Crimin' and Dealin' 13. Summer: Hope Overture 14. Summer: Tense 15. Summer: Bialy and Lox Conga - Moonrats 16. Fall: Cleaning Apartment 17. Fall: Ghosts-Falling 18. Fall: Dreams 19. Fall: Arnold 20. Fall: Marion Barfs 21. Fall: Supermarket Sweep 22. Fall: Dreams 23. Fall: Sara Goldfarb Has Left the Building 24. Fall: Bugs Got a Devilish Grin Conga 25. Winter: Winter Overture 26. Winter: Southern Hospitality 27. Winter: Fear 28. Winter: Full Tense 29. Winter: The Beginning of the End 30. Winter: Ghosts of a Future Lost 31. Winter: Meltdown 32. Winter: Lux Aeterna 33. Winter: Coney Island Low
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DVD AND VHS VIDEO |
Employing shock techniques and sound design in a relentless sensory assault, Requiem for a Dream is about nothing less than the systematic destruction of hope. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr., and adapted by Selby and director Darren Aronofsky, this is undoubtedly one of the most effective films ever made about the experience of drug addiction (both euphoric and nightmarish), and few would deny that Aronofsky, in following his breakthrough film Pi, has pushed the medium to a disturbing extreme, thrusting conventional narrative into a panic zone of traumatized psyches and bodies pushed to the furthest boundaries of chemical tolerance. It's too easy to call this a cautionary tale; it's a guided tour through hell, with Aronofsky as our bold and ruthless host. The film focuses on a quartet of doomed souls, but it's Ellen Burstyn--in a raw and bravely triumphant performance--who most desperately embodies the downward spiral of drug abuse. As lonely widow Sara Goldfarb, she invests all of her dreams in an absurd self-help TV game show, jolting her bloodstream with diet pills and coffee while her son Harry (Jared Leto) shoots heroin with his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and slumming girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly). They're careening toward madness at varying speeds, and Aronofsky tracks this gloomy process by endlessly repeating the imagery of their deadly routines. Tormented by her dietary regime, Sara even imagines a carnivorous refrigerator in one of the film's most memorable scenes. And yet... does any of this have a point? Is Aronofsky telling us anything that any sane person doesn't already know? Requiem for a Dream is a noteworthy film, but watching it twice would qualify as masochistic behavior. --Jeff Shannon --Amazon.com |
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SYNOPSIS |
| For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, PI, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. However, in Aronofsky's frenetic, visionary, unique, and disturbing style lies the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. This is a different sort of horror film. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) are lovers in Brooklyn with dreams of setting up a small business and spending the rest of their lives in love--their version of the American dream. The two are also desperate heroin addicts, a compulsion that darkens their lives and leads Harry to repeatedly pawn his mother's television. His mother, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to television, which is why she keeps replacing the stolen set. One day she receives a call from her favorite show, the surreal TAPPY TIBBONS SHOW, and learns that she has been selected to appear on an upcoming broadcast. When she can't fit into her best red dress, her doctor prescribes diet pills (uppers), to which she swiftly and painfully becomes addicted. Harry's cohort, an intelligent hustler named Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), completes the foursome. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made. |
INTERESTING FACTS |
According to Variety, Artisan originally appealed to the MPAA asking for an NC-17 rating on this film. That appeal was refused, the MPAA would not give the film a rating, so it was given unrated status, which greatly limited its theatrical release. According to Variety, the reason for the rating is a scene in which Jennifer Connelly's character has lesbian sex while a group of fully clothed men watch. However, other sources (such as New York magazine) attribute the rating to the film's devastating depiction of drug addiction.
Ellen Burstyn performed much of the movie in a 40-pound body suit.
Jared Leto shed a fifth of his normal body weight for his role in the film. After completing the intense film shoot, the actor shaved his head and checked himself into a monastery in Portugal.
Novelist Hubert Selby Jr. worked with Aronofsky to adapt his novel to the big screen.
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM contains more than 2,000 cuts.
Sean Gullette, who played the lead in Aronofsky's debut film, PI, has a minor role as a psychologist in this film
The haunting score for REQUIEM FOR A DREAM was composed by Clint Mansell, who also composed the music for director Darren Aronofsky?s first movie, PI. Mansell is a member of the industrial music group Pop Will Eat Itself. The Online Film Critics Society named Mansell's work Best Original Score.
The American Film Institute named the film among the 10 best of the year.
The jurors include David Ansen, Bill Duke, Michael Nesmith, Steven Zaillian, Saul Zaentz, and Anne Thompson.
Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly chose REQUIEM FOR A DREAM as the second best film of 2000; John Anderson of Newsday named it fifth best.
Rober Ebert (EBERT AND ROEPER AT THE MOVIES), Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, Elvis Mitchell of the New York Times, and Jack Matthews of the New York Daily News named REQUIEM FOR A DREAM one of the 10 best films of 2000.
Ellen Burstyn was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress for her outstanding performance. She was also voted Best Actress by the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Florida Film Critics Circle, and the Online Film Critics Society. She also won a Career Achievement Award from the National Board of Review.
The Online Film Critics Society named Darren Aronofsky Best Director; it also awarded the Best Editing prize to Jay Rabinowitz.
Matt Zoller Seitz and Godfrey Cheshire of the New York Press named REQUIEM FOR A DREAM one of the 10 best films of 2000.
Ellen Burstyn received the Career Achievement award from Al Pacino at the National Board of Review movie awards in January 2001. |
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 Review by
SIMON REMARK
simon_remark@hotmail.com
Film Reviewer
Simon graduated from Trinity Western University where he studied film under prolific screenwriter Ned Vankevich. He prefers independent and lower-budget films.
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 "Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain?" Each of the characters in this film has a dream: to be on TV, open a fashion boutique, and to become a big-time drug dealer. The dreams are hollow, and each character dies mentally and spiritually pursuing their dreams. |
| Despondency, fragmentation and despair are highlighted in Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, as the film follows four detached New Yorkers living in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. Requiem begins with Harry (Jared Leto) stealing his mom's television, which is chained to a radiator-this is obviously not a first. He desperately needs to feed his drug addiction, so it's off to the pawnshop. His mother, Sarah (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to TV. A split screen shows two isolated individuals: she escapes her despair watching TV, he escapes his with drugs, a perfect intro for a film about despair and hopelessness. |
 Sarah Goldfarb's husband is gone and her son Harry rarely visits; she spends most of her time watching a Tony Robins-type motivational speaker on TV, while eating chocolates. A call she receives to appear on a TV game show sparks some hollow hope; there is a chance to transcend her depression, and a chance to wear the lovely red dress she wore to Harry's grad. This becomes her reason for living, her source of joy and comfort in a lonely world where she has no one to care for and nothing to do. |
| She faces a serious dilemma, however. The dress doesn't fit, but she doesn't want to stop eating sugar and fatty foods (her other addiction). She visits a doctor who prescribes diet pills: three uppers during the day, and one downer at night. This is the beginning of her horrifying downward spiral into nothingness. |
 Her son Harry, on the other hand, along with his buddy Ty (Marlon Wayans) and girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), lives for quick fixes of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. Innovative close-ups throughout the film of rolled bills, rows of cocaine being cut and snorted, boiling heroin, and dilated pupils show Harry, Ty and Marion momentarily transcending their despair and hopelessness. The drugs allow them to travel to surreal, pleasure-filled worlds. Drug abuse, however, isn't glamorized at all. And each character's addiction only gets worse as the film progresses, leading to numerous unsettling images-most occur during the films climax (the images are by far the most harrowing I've seen on screen). |
| And although these images are, at times, difficult to watch, they are extremely convincing and powerful. Many viewers will experience discomfort, and may even wish they had never seen Requiem (one of my classmates said he felt like Alex from A Clockwork Orange being forced to watch disturbing images). But hopefully most will recognize the film's incredible insight into the despair and depression that accompany addiction. |
| The lives of all four characters are somehow interconnected-mother and son, boyfriend and girlfriend, buddy and buddy-but the film highlights only isolation. There is a disconnection and an isolation that subverts any attempt at finding meaning or relationship or true connection between these characters. Nothing is fruitful. Nothing is beautiful. Everything is awful. |
| Requiem director Darren Aronofsky uses visual imagery to underscore this pervasive despondency and disconnectedness. Lovers Harry and Marion, lying next to each other, are seen separate on a split screen. When it appears as though Harry is reaching out to Marion, his arm doesn't reach her on the split screen. They are separate, though lying next to each other. |
| Ty remembers his mother's unconditional love before having sex with a lover-the shameful sex between the two contrasts his memory of being held and genuinely loved. A translucent image of his mother holding him appears again at the end of the film as he lies alone and lonely. |
| Harry communicates with his mother through the television, and this mediator symbolizes the whole of their relationship. It is as unreal as the images projected. Harry's mother, Sarah, articulates this separation when she admits that she is all alone and lonely. All she wants is to be somebody, but even this dream is built on a foundation of unreality and it eventually leads to her profoundly final dehumanization. |
 The disconnection and disaffection makes nothing fruitful. The sex is non-productive and objectifying. The drugs are destructive and dehumanizing. The relationships are hollow and everyone is alone and lonely, numbing their loneliness with drugs and vacuous dreams: "Someday I will be a Somebody." This is not a movie about drug abuse or junkies or the media or sex, per se. It is a movie that is profoundly about this culture of fragmentation, despondency and isolation. |
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PHOTOS |
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requiem for a happy thought
Subject: Requiem_For_A_Dream
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002
From: Larry
this was the first movie I ever walked out of and couldn't explain why I was so ..there still are no words for it. it's just a blank stare unable.. to fixate on anything or anyone with intermittent physical quivers at the idea of that being anywhere CLOSE to ANYONE'S reality and at the end of a stream of reflection of the movies scenes, you curl up into the fetal position simply waiting for it to pass. a friend of mine described it as "a nice baseball bat of reality to the head." It's one of the best films I've ever seen, and by far the most depressing. did I mention it was great? oh yeah, and it's just a movie.
jesus is coming |
OFFICIAL SITE
Requiem for a Dream © 2001 Artisan. All Rights Reserved. |
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