Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream is as bravura a display of filmmaking as you’re likely to see; an exhibition of poised expressionist swagger beside which the pyrotechnics of David Fincher seem positively bromidic. In print its visual flourishes may sound ostentatious: split screens, acceleration then deceleration, fades to white, title cards, demonic fridges and Coney Island dreamscapes. Even that old John Frankenheimer favourite the fish-eye lens takes a bow 60 minutes in.
But it works. And it keeps on working, pounding and whirring into hard proof of a singular cinematic talent unafraid to experiment yet prepared to borrow from past iconoclasts. Which, when the comically pompous opening shot of Bruno Dumont’s L’Humanité can be referred to as a pivotal image in contemporary film, couldn’t be better timed.
Of course, the usual term for such aesthetic grandstanding is MTV filmmaking, a put-down routinely applied to anyone under 40 who does more than point the camera at the actors. In this context it’s a criticism rendered obsolete by the sheer breadth of Aronofsky’s direction with its brave juxtaposition of visual audacity and the horrific (but essentially everyday) descent of its subjects. Yet there is a certain precision musicality to Aronofsky’s film, a rhythmic pulse which echoes his protagonists’ relentless decline. In a recurrent motif he strips down the mechanics of drug use to their fundamentals: a needle is filled; a bank note rolled; a television switched on. Blood vessels expand, pupils dilate. Cut, after cut, after cut, after cut. On one level it’s an inspired technical fancy, the scratch and rewind of rap translated to celluloid. On another it’s a stark insight into the blank lab-rat cycle of addiction.
In other words, Aronofsky’s razzle-dazzle serves to articulate his themes. Except this articulacy isn’t confined to his box of tricks; there’s as much loaded eloquence in scenes as gracefully minimal as a weary Jennifer Connelly standing before a mirror until a cocaine rush (bill rolled, line chopped, eyes wide) literally elevates her, her arms high above her head like a ballerina. It should go without saying that, given the egregiously talkative nature of the modem American indie movie, such fluency is a godsend.
It’s also a hugely significant evolution in Aronofsky’s filmmaking after the monochrome zeal of his feature debut Pi. There, potent though the end result was, the image was the raison d’être, the point the shock of the new as seen through the eyes of a migraine-suffering genius-obsessive (exemplified by a brain quivering on a dank subway platform). Here, the visual authority is as likely to come from the director’s increasingly vivid eye for the mundane details that punctuate even the most hellish of trajectories: a paper plane floating to earth, a conversation between hospital porters, a phone number scrawled on the back of a photograph, a tear welling above a bulwark of mascara.
Of course, one important practical distinction between Aronofsky’s debut and his follow-up is that whereas the narrative coherence of Pi was often at the mercy of its visual sensibilities, Requiem is founded on a concrete storyline (adapted from Hubert Selby Jr’s 1978 novel), a classic three-act morality tale right down to its title cards. Much of the credit for that belongs to Selby, but it’s Aronofsky’s refusal to marginalise Ellen Burstyn’s lonely Coney Island mom Sara Goldfarb in favour of the more overtly romantic trio of her son Harry (Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Connelly) and friend Ty (Marlon Wayans) that truly fires the film; to have done otherwise would both have confirmed the conventional wisdom that young male directors are only happy dealing with young male subjects and sabotaged the denouement.
Alongside his film’s ferocious stylisation Aronofsky develops a genuine empathy with his characters, granting them substantial interior lives without recourse to having them explain ‘how they feel’. And for a director accused in the US of seeing his cast as little more than meat puppets, he does a fine job of coaxing some sublime performances from his principals. By the film’s bitter conclusion I felt a deeper attachment to all four of Aronofsky’s supposed ciphers than I did to anyone in Magnolia after three hours plus of Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling opus. And I liked Magnolia. Without such a connection, the film’s infernal final third would be a mere exercise in guignol; as it is, it’s a brutal but unforgettable kick in the chest. And, for an audience dizzy with the slack-jawed irony of modem US cinema, a shot in the arm.
Which brings us, glibly enough, to heroin. In the US, where its reception bordered on outrage, one of the more enthusiastic notices described Aronofsky as having made the ‘definitive skag movie’. And it’s certainly true that Requiem for a Dream has a far clearer grip on opiate compulsion than such ostensible peers as Gus Van Sant’s prettified Drugstore Cowboy or the empty fripperies of Trainspotting. The proximity of smack to the spine of the narrative was always going to give Aronofsky problems: wallow in grimly prosaic junkiedom and you’ve got another tedious, repellent Christiane F.; airbrush reality and the spectre of The Basketball Diaries rears its glossy, pouting head.
Certainly, Aronofsky goes with sexy young faces for three-quarters of his cast, with the attendant risk of reviving heroin chic. But with heroin chic the glazed nonchalance of the models is exactly that, a profound indifference to anything beyond artifice; in Requiem for a Dream it’s all about anaesthesia trying to kill a pain that won’t die. While Connelly and Leto initially make an exquisite couple, their gently wasted allure only adds to the pathos when their worlds cave in. Beauty, to Aronofsky, doesn’t fade so much as fall apart. Throw in the septicaemia that dominates much of the film’s closing stages and chic seems a long way away.
In any case, heroin itself is irrelevant in the face of the film’s overriding theme: the need for an escape, for over the rainbow, and the cataclysms that await as a consequence. In Requiem for a Dream that can mean anything from the ‘pound of pure’ Harry and Ty never quite catch sight of to Marion’s lust for independence or – most poignantly of all – Sara’s visions of being needed again. And here Aronofsky deserves every plaudit for never condescending to the apparently tawdry dreams of a dilapidated old woman desperate to appear as a ‘winner’ on a television infomercial where there are no winners, only salesmen.
Ultimately Aronofsky’s concern is not with junkies, cokeheads or tragic Jewish mothers but with the gaping universal psychic wounds that Hollywood merely dresses with plastic redemption. Like staring into the sun (as a young boy did in Pi) or into the abyss (as Aronofsky does here), Requiem for a Dream won’t let you look away the same person. For that, we should be grateful.
Danny Leigh, Sight and Sound, December 2000
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
Director: Darren Aronofsky
©: Requiem for a Dream LLC
Presented by: Artisan Entertainment, Thousand Words
Production Companies: Sibling Entertainment, Protozoa Pictures
In association with: Industry Entertainment, Bandeira Entertainment
Developed with assistance of: Sundance Institute
Executive Producers: Nick Wechsler, Beau Flynn, Stefan Simchowitz
Co-executive Producer: Ben Barenholtz
Producers: Eric Watson, Palmer West
Co-producers: Randy Simon, Jonah Smith, Scott Vogel, Scott Franklin
Unit Production Manager: Lori Keith Douglas
Production Co-ordinator: Chris Collins
Location Manager: Michael Nickodem
Post-production Supervisor: Douglas Wilkinson
1st Assistant Director: Timothy Bird
2nd Assistant Director: Chip Signore
Script Supervisor: Jennifer Getzinger
Casting Associates: Freddy Luis, Jennifer Lindesmith
Screenplay: Hubert Selby Jr, Darren Aronofsky
Based on the novel by: Hubert Selby Jr
Director of Photography: Matthew Libatique
Camera Operator: Richard Rutowski
B Camera Operators: Dana Altomare, Michael Dana
Steadicam Operators: Will Arnot, Sandy Hays
Digital Effects: Amoeba Proteus
Visual Effects Designer/Supervisors: Jeremy Dawson, Dan Schrecker
Special Effects Co-ordinator: Drew Jiritano
Editor: Jay Rabinowitz
Associate Editor: Matt Mayer
Production Designer: James Chinlund
Art Director: Judy Rhee
Set Decorator: Ondine Karady
Designer Consultant: Eliza Jimenez
Costume Designer: Laura Jean Shannon
Red Dresses Designed by: Carolyn Griffell
Wardrobe Supervisors: Donna Maloney, Pamela Kezal
Key Make-up: Judy Chin
Special Make-up/Prosthetic Effects: Vincent J. Guastini
Key Hair: Quentin Harris
Title/Credit Design: Amoeba Proteus
Music: Clint Mansell
Music Performed by: The Kronos Quartet
Sound Design: Brian Emrich
Sound Mixer: Ken Ishii
Re-recording Mixers: Tom Johnson, Tony Sereno
Supervising Sound Editor: Nelson Ferreira
Sound Effects Design/Editing: Craig Henighan
Stunt Co-ordinator: Pete Bucossi
Cast
Ellen Burstyn (Sara Goldfarb)
Jared Leto (Harry Goldfarb)
Jennifer Connelly (Marion Silver)
Marlon Wayans (Tyrone C. Love)
Christopher McDonald (Tappy Tibbons)
Louise Lasser (Ada)
Marcia Jean Kurtz (Rae)
Janet Sarno (Mrs Pearlman)
Suzanne Shepherd (Mrs Scarlini)
Joanne Gordon (Mrs Ovadia)
Charlotte Aronofsky (Mrs Miles)
Mark Margolis (Mr Rabinowitz)
Mike Kaycheck (donut cop)
Jack O’Connell (corn dog stand boss)
Chas Mastin (Lyle Russel)
Ajay Naidu (mailman)
Sean Gullette (Arnold the shrink)
Samia Shoaib (Nurse Mall)
Peter Maloney (Dr Pill)
Abraham Abraham (King Neptune)
Aliya Campbell (Alice)
Te’ron A. O’Neal (young Tyrone)
Denise Dowse (Tyrone’s mother)
Bryan Chattoo (Brody)
Eddie De Harp (Brody’s henchman Victor)
Scott Franklin (voice of jailer)
Peter Howard (Sal the Geep)
Brian Costello (first AD)
Abraham Aronofsky (newspaper man on train)
James Chinlund (space oddity)
Olga Merediz (Malin & Block secretary)
Allison Furman (Malin & Block office woman)
Robert Dylan Cohen (Paramedic Greenhill)
Ben Shenkman (Dr Spencer)
Keith David (Big Tim)
Dylan Baker (Southern doctor)
Shaun O’Hagen (Ward Attendant Seto)
Leland Gantt (Ward Attendant Penn)
Bill Buell (court doctor)
Jimmie Ray Weeks (prison guard)
Greg Bello (ER doctor)
Henry Stram (ECT technician)
Heather Litteer, Jenny Decker, Ami Goodheart,
Nina Zavarin (Big Tim party girls)
Stanley B. Herman (Uncle Hank)
Scott Bader, Jim Centofanti, Scott Chait, Daniel Clarin, Ben Cohen, Eric Cohen, Brett Feinstein, Ricky Fier, John Getz, Andrew Kessler, Ross Lombardo, Carter Mansbach, Scott Miller, Todd Miller, Joshua Pollack, Craig Rallo, Geordan Reisner, Keith Scandore, David Seltzer, Chris Varvaro, Ricardo Viñas, Chad Weiner, Jesse Weissberger, Greg Weissman (party animals)
Hubert Selby Jr (laughing guard)
Liana Pai (angelic nurse)
USA 2000©
102 mins
Digital
DISCOMFORT MOVIES
Eraserhead
Mon 1 Jul 20:40 (+ extended intro to the season by curator Kimberley Sheehan); Sun 14 Jul 17:50; Sat 27 Jul 20:50
The Lost Weekend
Sat 6 Jul 15:10; Sun 21 Jul 17:45; Mon 29 Jul 20:40
Requiem for a Dream
Sat 6 Jul 20:45; Fri 19 Jul 18:20
A Woman under the Influence
Sun 7 Jul 19:30; Sun 28 Jul 17:20
Bug
Mon 8 Jul 18:15; Thu 25 Jul 20:50
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Tue 9 Jul 18:10; Mon 22 Jul 20:35
Threads
Thu 11 Jul 18:15; Sun 21 Jul 15:15
Possession
Mon 15 Jul 18:00
Funny Games
Mon 15 Jul 20:45; Sat 27 Jul 14:15
Climax + Strasbourg 1518
Tue 16 Jul 18:10; Sun 28 Jul 20:20
Crash + Titane
Sat 20 Jul 18:15, 18:30
Audition Ôdishon
Wed 24 Jul 20:45; Wed 31 Jul 18:15
Skinamarink
Sun 28 Jul 14:20; Wed 31 Jul 20:45
Relaxed Screening: Eraserhead + intro and discussion
Mon 29 Jul 18:10
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
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