Darren Aronofsky, 2000, 100m
A powerful and beautifully crafted film about the hell of hard drugs. We see four addicts, an aging woman and three youth, rapidly sliding down a roller coaster. The only mercy shown is that all of them are alive at the end: the woman uncured of hallucinations even with ECT, and, among the youngsters, one in jail, another with an amputation, the teenage girl driven to prostitution.
Ebert: "...a travelogue of hell..."
To quote the director: "Requiem for a Dream is not about heroin or about drugs… The Harry-Tyrone-Marion story is a very traditional heroin story. But putting it side by side with the Sara story, we suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, what is a drug?' The idea that the same inner monologue goes through a person's head when they're trying to quit drugs, as with cigarettes, as when they're trying to not eat food so they can lose 20 pounds, was really fascinating to me. I thought it was an idea that we hadn't seen on film and I wanted to bring it up on the screen."
A powerful and beautifully crafted film about the hell of hard drugs. We see four addicts, an aging woman and three youth, rapidly sliding down a roller coaster. The only mercy shown is that all of them are alive at the end: the woman uncured of hallucinations even with ECT, and, among the youngsters, one in jail, another with an amputation, the teenage girl driven to prostitution.
Ebert: "...a travelogue of hell..."
To quote the director: "Requiem for a Dream is not about heroin or about drugs… The Harry-Tyrone-Marion story is a very traditional heroin story. But putting it side by side with the Sara story, we suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, what is a drug?' The idea that the same inner monologue goes through a person's head when they're trying to quit drugs, as with cigarettes, as when they're trying to not eat food so they can lose 20 pounds, was really fascinating to me. I thought it was an idea that we hadn't seen on film and I wanted to bring it up on the screen."
