FilmBlather.com

"I'm thinking thin!"

There are films, rare as they may be, that are so powerful, have such an awesome emotional effect on the viewer, that he leaves the theater gasping for breath. Even if said film fails to stand up to close scrutiny after the fact, its value is hardly diminished. I will never forget Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream, a journey into the lives of drug addicts that is as deeply personal as it is harrowing. Never have we been taken this close to the edge and never have the characters teetering over it elicited so much sympathy. Requiem is difficult to watch but it richly rewards those who stay with it.

At the center of the film is Sarah Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), a lonely old woman whose boring life is rejuvenated with the arrival of a letter telling her that she will soon be contacted to appear on an unspecified gameshow. She quickly becomes the envy of her neighbors, who sit outside the apartment building in lawn chairs waiting for the mailman to arrive with the follow-up letter. Alas, days fly by and the mailman keeps on coming by empty-handed. Sarah, still thinking she's going on television, starts taking diet pills so she can good in that red dress on the big day.

It never quite dawns on Sarah that the letter she's so anxious to receive isn't coming anytime in the near future and she begins to descend down the slippery slope of addiction. Her son Harry (Jared Leto), meanwhile, has already crossed that threshold, though he has yet to taste the consequences. He and his friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans, trying to decide what he's doing in an actual movie) come up with plan after plan to strike it rich in the drug trade and move to Florida; as their plans backfire one by one, Harry starts to depend more and more on his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connely) as a source of income; sadly, that income is generated by Marion's degrading herself in doing sexual favors for rich businessmen.

The film's tone changes so gradually from whimsically poignant to impossibly intense that we hardly realize that in its last twenty minutes we are watching some of the most disturbing imagery ever shown in a commercial film. Requiem for a Dream is so beguiling, in fact, that we aren't repulsed by what we see -- an effect a lesser film would certainly have had -- instead, we find our eyes glued to the screen. The overall effect is amazing; this is one of the rare films after which I sat through the end credits trying to process what I had just seen.

Those last twenty minutes earned the movie its NC-17 rating (which the studio summarily rejected, releasing the film Unrated) and make no mistake, they are brutal. In an incredible montage set to Clint Mansell's neo-classical score, Sarah Goldfarb gets electro-shock therapy, her son gets his arm amputated, his friend has a breakdown on prison work detail and his girlfriend loses the rest of her dignity putting on a sex show. One way or another, we know this will be the last step in our protagonists' descent; it reaches its climax and they emerge with new perspectives. The film doesn't tell us if the four of them will change, reform or turn their lives around but it does end on an understated, beautiful note of hope in what is one of the best closing shots I have seen.

Requiem has taken blows from critics with regard to its alleged redundancy. People complain that the film pounds the same message -- drugs are bad -- into the viewers' minds with a sledgehammer, which would certainly be a problem were it actually true. Thankfully, these criticisms are wildly miscalculated; Aranofsky's film isn't redundant but uncompromising, showing us the effects of drug addiction without any attempt to sugarcoat them for a commercial audience. The message that comes out of all this is overwhelmingly strong, but that doesn't necessarily make the movie heavy-handed.

Ellen Burstyn is attracting Oscar buzz for her strong performance as Sarah Goldfarb. Aside from her admirable willingness to look absolutely hideous for almost the duration of this picture, her performance succeeds in making us want to cross over into the movie, give Sarah a hug and tell her that everything will be okay (though Requiem isn't foolish enough to let on that this would solve her problems). Jennifer Connely inspires waterfalls of pity while Leto and Wayans are impressively convincing in their somewhat less fleshed-out roles. The acting is the clincher to this experience; the last step in giving this film its horrifyingly realistic aura.

You know, I'm sure, that addiction is a terrible thing. Requiem does more than show you how terrible it really is; it shows you real people who have been affected by it in genuine ways. The film isn't "entertaining" or "enjoyable" in any conventional way but then cinema has never been limited to those two terms. Requiem for a Dream is a work of art that enthralls while it terrifies.