Requiem for a Dream is the American motion picture shot in 2000 by Darren Aranofsky. Based on the novel of the same name by Hubert Selby, Jr., the film got a critical acclaim and is still considered one of the best films ever made. The film’s praised soundtrack composed by Clint Mansell inspired numerous filmmakers and musicians as well as charmed the audience who easily recognizes the string quartet melodies from Requiem for a Dream.
The film tells the audience a story of four individuals connected by the drug addiction. The director shows the characters’ rapid decline splitting the narration into seasons thus highlighting the short timeframes needed for a human to become the social misfit. Harry can be considered the central character of Requiem for a Dream because the other three characters are directly related to him: Sara is his mother who dreams to be on television and thus gets addicted to the diet pills; Marion is his girlfriend and Tyrone C. Love is his best friend. Harry, Marion, and Tyrone are heroin addicts that one day decide to start the drug trade in order to get money for a living. “The story involves the characters' dream-chasing. Harry wants to be rich, his mother wants him to be married and happy, and Marion wants to be a part of his life” (Mitchell). The director aims to provide the detailed process of the degradation with the most tragic finale for each character.
The film’s major theme may seem to be the drug addiction but the intelligent spectator will catch the director’s message and feel that there is something more profound hidden in the film. The most important issue of Requiem for a Dream is the person’s imprisonment anticipated by his/her weakness that, in its turn, led to some form of obsession. The brightest example of obsession in the film is Sara’s wish to become beautiful and slim enough to be shown on TV. The director wanted to demonstrate the individual’s loss of reality while his/her getting into the alternative dimension ruled by the obsession. Such unique vision and profound approach challenge both Classical Hollywood film and the society in general during the era of its production. The beginning of the 20th century only saw the beginning of the consumerism era so obviously it could have never come to any of the director’s mind and would never appear on the screen. “The aforementioned usage of queasy cameras and split-screens, plus the typical hallucinations and Aronofsky’s almost signature fade to white ()” is the direct opposite to the Classical Hollywood ethics and vision of what the motion picture needs to convey (Runyon).
All the scenes including the play of the talented Ellen Burstyn (Sara) demonstrate a high contrast to the dominant conventions in Hollywood. The surrealistic scene where the old woman finds herself in between the reality and her TV fantasies drive her crazy demonstrates the author’s rejection of the idyllic fake picture created by the camera that was so common in the Classical Hollywood. The director exaggerates and distorts the famous images of the TV shows thus questioning their truthfulness and sincerity. Taking into account that the period from 1917 to 1960 was marked by the people’s focused attention to the world of cinema and television, the idyllic images were taken at their face value. In his film, Aranofsky shows what may happen to an average person who believes the screen.
Works Cited
Mitchell, Elvis. Film Review; Addicted to Drugs and Drug Rituals. New York Times, 2000. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
Runyon, Christopher. The Darren Aronofsky Retrospective: ‘Requiem for a Dream’. Movie Mezzanine, 2013. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
