Requiem for a Dream

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Drugs, chocolate and television are the most important ingredients in a hypnotic film about ordinary people who fall prey to deadly addictions while looking for quick gratification.

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. –IFFR

Darren Aronofsky

Darren Aronofsky was born February 12, 1969, in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up, Darren was always artistic: he loved classic movies and, as a teenager, he even spent time doing graffiti art. After high school, Darren went to Harvard University to study film (both live-action and animation). He won several film awards after completing his senior thesis film, “Supermarket Sweep”, starring Sean Gullette, which went on to becoming a National Student Academy Award finalist. Aronofsky didn’t make a feature film until five years later, in February 1996, where he began creating the concept for Pi (1998). After Darren’s script for Pi (1998) received great reactions from friends, he began production. The film re-teamed Aronofsky with Gullette, who played the lead. This went on to further successes, such as Requiem for a Dream (2000) and, most recently, the American remake of the Japanese film series “Lone Wolf and Cub” (1973). —IMDb

Matt Burgess

21May12

Since I adore anti-drug/alcohol advertisements for their blatant manipulation, hysterical heavy handedness and eagerness to wallow in the very filth they condemn, this was like a dream come true for me. An exquisitely filmed after school special. ASS TO ASS! ASS TO ASS!