Sunday, October 28, 2007

Movie Review- Requiem for a Dream

This an amazing film. This is also the most fucked-up and one of the most depressing film I have ever seen. The film revolves around four people whose drug addiction spin out of control. Three of the characters are friends with ambitions to go from just being drug users to drug sellers. Jared Leto, Harry, and Jennifer Connelly, Marion, play a couple who want to make enough money so that Marion can open her own clothing shop. Marlon Wayans, Tyrone, is the third of this trio and he has the connections to get them the drugs, so that they can become drug sellers and make real money. He is also driven by his memory of his mother and wanting to be somebody to make her proud. Ellen Burstyn, Sara, plays Harry's mother. She becomes addicted to amphetamines when she wants to lose weight so that she can go on TV. The film is interlaced with these amazing, but really disorienting scenes of the characters hallucinating and their drug fixes.

The acting is awesome in the film with Ellen Burstyn amazing as a widow with no one to take care of, who becomes addicted to the "uppers" so that she can be on TV and be noticed. The scenes of her hallucinations are possibly the most disturbing as hers are so intense and scary. They are not scary like horror film scary as much as the intensity of what is happening and her reactions are just overwhelming. She also seems to fall the farthest as when the movie starts she is just a lonely woman who watches TV all day, but still is not taking any drugs let alone addicted. The other three are already drug addicts, but their decline is accentuated by the fact that at some point the drug supply dries up in NYC and so they are desperate that they will try anything including driving to Miami to get a supply of drugs.

This is a short film at an hour and forty minutes, but it is intense from beginning to end. The cinematography and directing are amazing as well. It took me some time to really process the whole film and then figure out what the hell I was going to say about it. If you have not seen it yet, go out and rent this film.

1 comment:

Fran said...

Intense and exhausting but great in all the ways you say.

This was so well cast and so well executed. I actually saw it a second time, although I would leave the room from time to time. (with folks who were watching it for the first time.)

It is a must see.