It's taken me a longggg time to finally commit to watching Darren Aronofsky's Requiem For A Dream and now that I have, I have no earthly desire to ever, ever see it again. Aronofsky's filmography is a fascinating one for me personally; one of his films (The Fountain) is in my top three of all time and has endless rewatch capability, while every other one I've seen I've either not been huge on, or admired but felt like once was enough. That certainly applies here, this is a well made and thoughtful film yet it's pessimistic to the bone and so bleak in its outlook that you feel a dark stain on your soul when it's choking narrative of several Coney Island drug addicts comes to a hellish, cacophonous ending. Jared Leto and Marlon Wayans are a pair of sad sack heroin junkies, Jennifer Connelly is Leto's equally strung out girlfriend and Ellen Burstyn his hopeless mother who withers away at home, getting sicker and sicker on poisonous diet pills that rot her body, and a toxic daytime TV talk show (hosted by Christopher 'Shooter McGavin' McDonald, no less) that rots her mind. These various individuals each occupy their own disheartening downward spiral and weave in and out of each other's orbit as they all proverbially circle the toilet bowl of a very dark outcome and while there are momentary flashes of what could be called compassion for these people, Aronofsky mostly just ruthlessly focuses on this very disturbing, apocalyptic chapter in their lives with little room for rhyme, reason or philosophical commentary. Perhaps it's best that way for this film, and seems to mirror the lack of answers or understanding all of us seem to have when we drive through a particularly derelict part of town where these horrifying trajectories can be observed in real time. The film starts off with false hopes of being kind of comedic in the fashion of other drug films like Spun or The Salton see but, like those films, it's all fun and games in the beginning stages of addiction and when the situation becomes dire, things spiral into oblivion faster than anybody can comprehend, especially those it happens to. So, while I will concede it's a terrific film with solid performances and a now iconic score from Clint Mansell, I'll tuck the dvd away, change the channel when it comes on and skip past it in the streaming queue, for I have no inclination to ever experience it again.
Review of Requiem for a Dream
