Requiem for a Dream

The Jewish widow and unorthodox mother Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn) is determined to get herself invited to attend one of her favourite TV shows. That is why she is on a frantic slimming cure, so that her red dress will fit when the big night arrives. Her son Harry has fallen victim to drugs. With his girlfriend Marion and his friend Tyrone, they try to escape everyday life and invoke childlike visions of paradise on earth. Looking for a better life, the four of them are drag along in a diabolical spiral downwards…Darren Aronofsky received widespread attention with his previous (second) feature, the puzzling and intriguing Pi. He was inspired to make Requiem for a Dream, a bizarre film about addiction, by the classic novel Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr., who is also cowriter. Drugs, chocolate, television, masturbation, coffee and cigarettes are the most important ingredients in this clever big-city story about ordinary people who get dragged down in deadly addictions while in search of instant gratification. The film uses surrealistic visual language, innovative, stylistically striking camera techniques and the kind of ‘hip-hop montage’ that samples images, reorganises them, repeats and recomposes them. The rapid hypnotic images give the viewer an idea of the effects of drugs.