Requiem for a Dream

With the Oscars coming up and my inconditional devotion for good films, today I'll be talking about one of my favorite movies, which I also consider one of the best movies ever made.

We had a gathering at my home over the weekend and at one point we began playing the "guess the movie soundtrack" game, going over most of the classic tracks from Disney, to epics, to adventure and so on. At one point the song that was played was Requiem for a Dream by the Chronos Quartet, which was immediately guessed by one of the guests in less than a second. When Another of the my guests asked "how could it be guessed so quickly", I replied "wow, that's just too great of a movie. Have you seen it?", to which she said she hadn't; as it turned out, I lent her the DVD and invited her to enjoy the memorable film. And that's what I'll be talking about today in preparation for torrow's Oscars ceremony. For those of you who haven't seen it, I'll not be spoiling anything. For those who want me to spoil something, I'll talk a bit about it at the end of the entry.

Normally movie posters give you a hunch of what the movie is about before watching it.
I remember seeing this poster and I was never able to make what was Requiem about.
But I did felt it was... interesting...

Requiem is not just a good movie, or a great movie. It's a powerful movie. It starts out very simply and it even looks cheap at the beginning. It's obviously an independent film, but just a couple of minutes into the movie, you are treated to something quite rare, which is the split screen experience, that lasts only a few seconds but strikes a very solid and crude point right from the start, backed up by the perpetual soundtrack of the Kronos Quartet that last for the rest of the movie as no more tracks are in the film -except for the refrigerator dancing scene-, which is why the tunes of the movie stick in anyone's mind so easily.

The first thing I'll mention about Requiem is the acting.

Jared Leto deploys his massive talent in this film, which in time will be recognized as worthy as he deserves

A young Jared Leto, who had just came from finishing "Fight Club" shines as Harry the troubled son of Sara, who wishes for a better life and works hard -perhaps not in the most legal of ways- to achieve it and bring happyness for himself as well as his girlfriend Marion, played by Jennifer Connelly. Most people believe Jen's peak was her portrayal of John Nash's wife in "A beautiful mind", but I troughfully disagree; I've always believed that you are witnessing an Oscar worthy performance, when an actor becomes THE character, and that's whan Jen does becoming Marion: my jaw-dropping moment is the bath-tub scene.

Marion in her most human and intimate moment: the bath tub scene

Then you have Marlon Wayans, fresh from the teen comical "Scary Movie" series, where he plays a one-sided dimensional character; in Requiem, Marlon plays Harry's best friend Tyrone, who has sort of a similar background as Harry's but less dramatic and more tragic. By the time the film had ended I had to double check it was Marlon Wayans the guy playing Tyrone, because I just simply couldn't put together that it was the same guy who got stoned with the killer in Scary movie. Marlon has a nude scene, with a profound impact because it humanizes the character in a way the viewer simply doesn't expect it.

It's a pity how other directors haven't capitalized on the talent Marlon showed in Requiem

The show however belongs to Ellen Burstyn.

And trust me, it's not that Jen, Jared and Marlon do an average job, or an above average job. Their performances alone are Oscar nomination worthy... any of them by equal strength. But Ellen... she just takes the entire film to a whole new level. Her performance is right there with Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone, or F.Murray Abraham's Antonio Salieri. Her character Sara Goldfarb, Harry's mother, starts quite pathetically, even comical if you want, but after say 15 minutes, begins gaining strength and like a huge snowball falling from top of Mount Everest, she soon becomes a huge avalanche. Like I said before, the dancing refrigerator scene becomes the "before and after" moment of the film. After that scene, Ellen reaches acting levels never seen in cinema on a lead female performance. The monologue scene left me breathless: according to IMDb:

"During Ellen Burstyn's impassioned monologue about how it feels to be old, cinematographer Matthew Libatique accidentally let the camera drift off-target. When director Darren Aronofsky called "cut" and confronted him about it, he realized the reason Libatique had let the camera drift was because he had been crying during the take and fogged up the camera's eyepiece. This was the take used in the final print."

... and just when you think nothing can top that scene, she just keep raising the bar. I don't want to give any specifics cause I don't want to spoil anything, but there are so many details on the character that everytime I watch the film, I am able to discover something new I hadn't seen before.

Sara Goldfarb: one of the greatest characters in the history of cinema

Ellen was indeed nominated for the Oscars that year 2001, but she lost to the more Hollywood-esque oriented film and better marketed as well as campaigned, Julia Robert's Erin Brockovich. But believe me: there is a HUGE, MONUMENTAL difference of acting between Julia's Erin and Ellen's Sara. And not that Julia didn't do a good job. In fact, to make things easy to understand and bring an interesting performance I can compare Julia's Erin performance to Jennifer's Marion, with the slight difference that perhaps you can say Julia's Erin was more of a "lead character" than Jen's Marion. Still, I rank both performances quite even.

How Ellen was snubbed by the Academy that year is beyond me. I guess Hollywood has always had a thing against independent films, and while Julia's Erin was a good choice, it was also a better fit to the cliché of award winning performances based on real life stories (IE: Colin Firth's King Speech, Geoffrey Rush's Shine, Martin Landau's Ed Wood, and so on). In fact, now that I think about it, I think I can dare to say that Ellen being snubbed that year is the greatest blunder in the history of Oscars. Anyway, let's move on...

That's just brilliant directing right there

Darren Aronofsky's direction is exactly what is expected from a director. He brings the film together and produces a massive piece of art. Kind of like how Apocalypse does in the post-credits scene of X-Men Days of future past, it gives the impression that Darren simply raised his hands and brought the pieces together perfectly. IMDb summarizes the plof of Requiem as:

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island people are shattered when their addicitons become stronger.

Which I could hardly summarize in a better way. My point is, not any director is able to make a film that narrates the story of four separate people, with such a unique balance, allowing them to interact with each other equally and go uphill and downhill, such synchonization and degree of precision.

Then you have details like the supporting/minor characters. Like I said before, this in an independent film, shot on a $ 4 million budget. It seems to me that Darren squeezed the best out of every penny to deliver the result he produced. The minor characters, who in any other film seem (or are) unimportant, in Requiem are as crucial and as important as the major characters. Well, obviously not THAT much, but my point is that they leave a strong impression in your mind, just as the lead characters do, and that is not something that happens on other films. Like for instance, how much do you remember of the guy who introduced Strider/Aragorn to Frodo in "Lord of the Rings"? Or how much do you remember the door bell in "There's something about Mary", or "the guys playing cards in Titanic". You pretty much get the point.

He only has like ten lines and five minutes of on-screen time, but man each word and each second is gold

Keith David, who has been known for providing memorable minor supporting appearances in films (General Kinsey in "Armageddon", Childs in "The Thing", King in "Platoon", Louis Fedders in "Men at Work"), delivers what I think is his best memorable minor appearance. Well, it's kind of hard to top Childs and Louis Fedders, but by playing Big Tim and "Requiem", he brings his a whole new meaning to the word "chauvinist". The scene in which Marion calls him and he answers the phone just by laughing "Heh-heh-heh"... is the epytome of Big Tim. Trust me, when you watch that scene you will either burst to death from laughing or throw a hammer at your TV set. Sara's friends are equally powerful, although in their own particular way inside the story and plot that has to do with Sara. I love the "if this is red, then what's orange" exchange.

Then you have a guy like Stanley B. Herman, who plays Uncle Hank, AKA the "Ass-to-Ass Guy". You probably haven't heard of Stanley B. Herman before, and trust me you'll probably never hear from him ever again. He's just in the film for what ... I think five seconds maybe ? Ten secs top ? However, his appearence is so memorable, that his character has even created a cult-following trend. There is a blog that became a trend (which I'll post at the end with all the rest of the spoiling parts) dedicated just to him, in which the author ponders "I'm not sure how he got cast to be the Ass-to-Ass Guy, but from what I can tell it was the role he was born to play". The author goes on to state "Not since Boba Fett in the original Star Wars trilogy has a character so intrigued the masses with a bare minimum of screen time". I myself could have not said it better.

Stanley B. Herman, in the role he was born to play: Uncle Hank

And of course everyone else in the film is as close as memorable: the deaf mob-boss, the police officer at the coffee shop, Arnold, the cops at the prison... even Dylan Baker makes a five second memorable appearance as well.

Combine all of this with the looping and haunting Kronos Quartet score, and the result is that Requiem for a dream leaves a mark in your brain so strong, it would take two ammesia attacks for it to start dissappearing.

Imagine if you will a mental beating the kind of ancient Roman's did on their slaves, relentlessly and endlessly until forcing their submission. That is exactly what this movie does to you. I have yet to meet someone who has been able to stand Requem without giving a minimal sign of grief. Requiem is the epitome of independent filmmaking: daring, crude, merciless, realistic and just when you think it will cut you a break, it keeps on pounding your mind non-stop. If you expect this film to take a pause and go easy on you for a minute or two, then you guessed wrong because it simply won't. It will go hard and harder and harder and just when you thought it cannot go any further, it will... until it breaks you down.

Part of the 15-round heavyweight fight with no stops between each round.

Watching Requiem is like being repeatedly punched in the back of the head by Mike Tyson. It's difficult to know what to say about Requiem. I first saw it in the cinema when it was released and I have never seen an audience react to a film like this one. The climactic sequence, where the protagonists are effectively destroyed by their addictions, seemed to trigger a bout of heavy breathing in the audience. As it was ending I heard a few people crying. My friend and I didn't say a single word to each other on the way home.

In sum, regardless of whether or not the subject matter itself shocks you, this movie will put the viewer through the proverbial wringer. Give it a chance, and you will connect with the characters and then witness their destruction (spiritual and otherwise). It is a punishing but unforgettable experience. I'm not sure whether I'd necessarily recommend it or not; it all depends on your personal tolerance level with regard to an unflinching portrayal of human nature and behavior at their most extreme and, ultimately, tragic. For my part, while I think it's very hard to watch this film very often, I'm sure glad I have it on my shelf.

and now... if you read from this point and on... I will share some of the most key insights of the film.

If you haven't seen it, please stop reading, go watch it and come back after you have finished.

In the end, Requiem is not just a movie about drug addiction.
It's a movie about emotions, about hope, about looking up and forward, about dreams, about struggle, about a reason to wake up every day in the morning.

SPOILERS BEGIN HERE - Stop reading if you haven't watch the film.

Ellen Burstyn's monologue:

Blog about Uncle Hank:

http://thebeerbarrel.net/threads/stanley-herman-the-ass-to-ass-guy.2640/