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Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 film adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name. The novel was written by Hubert Selby, Jr.; the film adaptation was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starred Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans. Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a dream world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken and devastated by reality.
film charts three seasons in the lives of mother and son Sara (Ellen Burstyn) and Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C.
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Quotations
And then, we could get a pound of pure, straight from Sada Giba.
And you should see my Harry on Television. We're giving the prizes away. I just wanted to be on the show!
Now we come to step three. This... drives... most... people... crazy.
Somebody like you can really make things all right for me.
Yeah, I'll come today. You just wait me alright. pause Marion, I'm really sorry Marion.
on her pills Purple in the morning, blue in the afternoon, and orange in the evening. Just like that, one, two, three, four.
Encyclopedia
Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 film adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name. The novel was written by Hubert Selby, Jr.; the film adaptation was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starred Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans. Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a dream world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken and devastated by reality.
Plot
The film charts three seasons in the lives of mother and son Sara (Ellen Burstyn) and Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans). Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.
The story begins in summer. Sara Goldfarb, an elderly widow living alone in her Brighton Beach apartment, spends her time watching infomercials on television. After a phone call announces that she will be invited to attend a live taping of a television show, she becomes obsessed with matching her appearance to a photograph from her son Harry's graduation, her proudest moment. In order to fit into her old red dress, the favorite of her deceased husband, she begins taking a regimen of prescription weight-loss amphetamine pills throughout the day and a sedative at night. The pills alter her behavior, but she passionately insists that the chance to be on television has given her a reason to live. Over the fall, however, her invitation does not arrive, and she begins to up her dosage, causing nightmarish hallucinations.
Meanwhile, Harry is an irresponsible heroin addict. Together with his friend Tyrone and his girlfriend Marion (an aspiring fashion designer), the group enters the drug trade in an attempt to realize their dreams. With the money they make over the summer, Harry and Marion hope to open a fashion store for Marion's designs, while Tyrone dreams of escaping the street and making his mother proud. However, at the beginning of fall, Tyrone is caught in the middle of a drug gang assassination, causing Harry to use the majority of the money they've earned to bail him out of prison. Meanwhile, because of the arrests and shootings of dealers, it becomes very hard to obtain any drugs, throwing Harry, Tyrone, and Marion into a state of deprivation. Growing more desperate, Harry convinces Marion to have sex with her ex-boyfriend in exchange for money, causing a rift between the pair. The group continues to deteriorate as Marion begins prostituting herself and Harry's arm becomes severely infected from his heroin injections.
With winter comes the final arc in the characters' downward spirals. Sara completely breaks down and becomes hospitalized, where she undergoes painful electroshock therapy. Harry and Tyrone travel to Florida, believing they can start over there, but Harry's deteriorating condition forces them to visit a hospital, where they are arrested. Harry's arm is amputated, while Tyrone must deal with hostile prison guards, hard labor, and drug withdrawal all alone. Harry has a recurring dream of Marion waiting for him at a pier, but awakens and realizes that she is gone and he has lost his arm. Marion continues to degrade herself at orgies for heroin. Meanwhile, Sara has become emaciated and catatonic at a mental asylum. Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position. In Sara's dream, however, she finally makes her television appearance and wins a prize. Harry is portrayed as a successful businessman, engaged to Marion. Mother and son hug and say how much they love one another through the cheers of the crowd and the glowing stage lights.
Cast
Production
The film rights to Hubert Selby, Jr.’s book Requiem for a Dream were optioned by Scott Vogel for Truth and Soul Pictures in 1997 prior to the release of p.
Rating
In the United States, the film was originally tagged with an NC-17 rating by the MPAA due to a sex scene. Aronofsky appealed the rating, claiming that cutting any portion of the film would dilute (if not outright destroy) its message. The appeal was denied, so Artisan decided to release the film unrated. An edited version of the film was released on video, rated R. This version had the sex scene shortened, but kept the rest of the movie identical to the unrated version. This R-rated version was only distributed in video store chains such as Blockbuster as well as some family-oriented department stores such as Target. The edited version contains an alternate title card, featuring the words "Requiem for a Dream Edited Version," ensuring that the viewer is aware that the version they are watching is not the original.
In the United Kingdom, the film has been given an 18 certificate by the BBFC.
In the DVD commentary, Aronofsky implies the "ass-to-ass" scene was based on something he actually witnessed; in the book, the particulars of Marion's prostitution are not described.
Themes
The majority of reviewers characterized Requiem for a Dream in the genre of "drug movies," along with films like Trainspotting, Spun, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. However, Aronofsky has said:
In the book, Selby refers to the "American Dream" as amorphous and unattainable, a compilation of the various desires of the story's characters. All the characters use some form of addiction as a substitute for the actual fulfillment of a dream, choosing immediate sensory placation over a struggle for some higher good. Selby explains the title of his book in this context—as a requiem for some specific dream (a dream) as opposed to the larger, overarching "American Dream" (the dream). While an individual dream can wither and die, the American Dream is persistent and cannot be easily overcome, certainly not by those who are so entangled in it that they cannot see it.
Style
As in his previous film, p, Aronofsky uses montages of extremely short shots throughout the film (sometimes termed a hip hop montage). While an average 100-minute film has 600 to 700 cuts, Requiem features more than 2,000. Split-screen is used extensively, along with extremely tight closeups. Long tracking shots (including those shot with an apparatus strapping a camera to an actor, called the Snorricam) and time-lapse photography are also prominent stylistic devices.
In order to portray the shift from the objective, community-based narrative to the subjective, isolated state of the characters' perspectives, Aronofsky alternates between extreme closeups and extreme distance from the action and intercuts reality with a character's fantasy. Aronofsky aims to subjectivise emotion, and the effect of his stylistic choices is personalisation rather than alienation.
The film's distancing itself from empathy is furthered structurally by the use of intertitles (Summer, Fall, Winter), marking the temporal progress of addiction. The average scene length shortens as the movie progresses (beginning around 90 seconds to 2 minutes) until the movie's climactic scenes, which are cut together very rapidly (many changes per second) and are accompanied by a score which increases in intensity accordingly. After the climax, there is a short period of serenity, during which idyllic dreams of what may have been are juxtaposed with portraits of the four shattered lives.
Many magazine film critics consider Requiem for a Dream the director's masterpiece.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack was composed by Clint Mansell with the string ensemble performed by Kronos Quartet. It is notable for its use of sharp string instruments to create a cold and discomforting sound from instruments frequently used for their warmth and softness. The string quartet arrangements were done by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang.
The soundtrack has been widely praised and has subsequently been used in various forms in trailers for other films and series, including The Da Vinci Code, Sunshine, Lost, I Am Legend, Valley of Flowers, Babylon A.D., Zathura, and the video game Assassin's Creed. More specifically, a version of the recurring theme was reorchestrated for the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers film trailer. This version is often known as "Requiem for a Tower." It has also been featured in many other commercials and trailers and as remixes on other artists' albums. For example, G.M.S. are widely known for their mix of the song, titled "Juice by GMS." Lil' Jon's track "Throw It Up" uses a sample from the main theme as the beat.
The soundtrack also confirmed its popularity with the remix album Requiem for a Dream: Remixed, which contains new mixes of the music by Paul Oakenfold, Josh Wink, Jagz Kooner, and Delerium, among others. The score is also used as the main theme for the UK's Sky Sports News channel and the entrance theme for the 2007–08 Boston Celtics NBA championship team.
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