The Most F**Ked Up Drug Movie Since Willy Wonka
From the American Heritage Dictionary:
Requiem: n. 1. A mass for a deceased person. 2. A Musical composition for such a mass. 3. A hymn, composition or service for the dead.
The definition was just in case you didn't know what requiem meant because I sure didn't. When the movie ended, I looked it up, figured out the title and then my brain collapsed cause it was just way-y-y too deep for me. When you read what goes on in the movie, the title will make more and more sense to you...or none of it won't make any sense cause it's a drug addiction movie and when you're on drugs, nothing hardly makes sense.
Directed and co-written by Darren Aronofsky, "Requiem For A Dream" stars Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans and you should be prepared: this movie IS about drugs. Every type of drugs you can think of. But let's start at the beginning.
First thing we see is Christopher McDonald as Tappy, one of those Tony Robbin's type guy who's all about "Juice!" Juice is suppose to stand for something but the title card on the screen went too fast for me to read. Anyway, Sara Goldfarb, played by Burstyn, is watching Tappy when her loving son Harold, played by Jared Leto, who by the way, my girlfriend thinks is the hottest guy ever in the history of the world and I'm only allowing him to live cause he was fuckin' awesome in "Fight Club", comes by to take her TV set.
See, he is a drug addict and needs money to buy drugs so he periodically goes and snags her TV set, pawns it, and buys drugs. Then Sara goes to the pawn shop and buys it back.
Harry's friend and fellow druggie is Tyone, played by Wayans. He has as much class as Harry does. Harry is also dating a super hot girl played by super hot Jennifer Connelly, named Marion. She too is a druggie.
One day, Sara gets a phone call from Tappy (or someone who sounds like Tappy) informing her she's gonna appear on her television show. Since she is a TV junkie, she accepts. She decides to wear this red dress she wore when Harry graduated cause she thinks she looks very hot in it. Well, his graduation was a long ass time ago, and she gained quite a lot of weight, so she decides to go on a diet. But she isn't enjoying her diet too well cause she is starving all the time and just wants to eat, eat, eat!! One of her friends, Ada, tells her about some doctor who gives you these nice little pills and you'll magically lose weight! Yay!!
Harry and Tyone, smoking and shooting and snortin' all kinds of stuff, decide they should become big time dealers themselves, so they buy some stuff from this dude named Brody, and they do pretty good for themselves. Pretty soon, everyone has a nice apartment, plenty of bling-bling, and Tyrone gets himself a ho or two. Harold decides to buy Sara a nice TV set to make up for all the times he took hers. Sara, meanwhile, is really getting into the nice little happy diet pills. They make her run around her apartment, grind her teeth, and eventually just collapse at the end of the night from exhaustion.
Harold and Tyrone, meanwhile, are hitting it big time. They got more money then they know what to do with. But then things change. During parts in the movie we get title cards telling us when it's Summer, Fall, and then Winter, which is suppose to symbolize the three acts of every movie. Summer was the first act where everything is set up, but then a problem arises at the end. The problem here is Tyone meets up with Brody, who turns out to be a deaf-mute, and Brody's chauffer turns out to be a hired killer and kills everyone in the limo except Tyrone.
The reason for the killing is, according to Harry, the blacks and the Italians are having a drug war now, so getting drugs is gonna be a big problem. And I do mean big. Tyrone and Harry's money is getting low, there's less drugs, and everyone is all jittery from withdrawls. Then Harry notices a little bump on his arm where he regularly shoots up.
Sara is still taking the drugs, but notices suddenly they don't have the impact they once had. She calls the doctor and the nurse tells her it's cause she's adjusted to them. Well, that just won't do for you 60-year-old diet pill fiend. So she doubles, triples, even probably quadruples the amount of pills she's suppose to take.
Then the fun hallucinations kick in. She keeps thinking her refrigerator is gonna attack her and it keeps creeping up on her very slowly. She also watches Tappy's show and halluctinates that she's watching herself on his show. Then things REALLY get fucked up. The TV images of Tappy and TV Sara zap out and appear in her apartment, looking at the old things in her apartment. They all laugh at her, with the fridge getting closer and closer to her. She really freaks out and runs out of the apartment.
Things are getting worse for Marion and Harry. Harry can't get any drugs for them so things are really tense for them. Tyrone hears about a drug dealer coming in a big truck at a grocery store at midnight, but the price for the stuff went up, and they don't have the money. So Harry asks Marion if she'd ask her old therepist, named Arnold, if he'll give her some money. They both realize that he's not gonna give it to her just like that and she'd have to perfrom a certain task, if you know what I mean.
Yep, she did his taxes for him. Ok, not really.
Arnold gives her the money, gives it to Harry, and he and Tyron go to the store to get the drugs but things go bad when a junkie pulls a gun out. Freaked out, the drug dealer peels off. Not knowing what else to do, Tyrone and Harry decide to drive to Florida to steal the drugs from the drug dealer, leaving Marion behind.
Marion, who really is desperate at this point, calls up this dude named Big Tim. Big Tim only gives drugs to women who provide a service for him. Yep, taxes again. He likes Marion and invites her to this get together at his place later that week.
While driving to Florida, Harry shows Tyrone his arm. Remember that little bump? Well, it's a huge gaping hole now and...ugh..
Ok, a little personal info before I attempt to go on. I really can not stand needles or seeing a needle go inside a arm. It just gives me jitters and I feel...I don't know what. But it really bothers me. So from this scene on, I was really trying to watch but they kept showing the huge hole in his arm...and Harry sticks a needle in it...
Oh man...
Ok, jumping ahead a little. Tyrone takes Harry to a doctor in whatever city they stopped at, the doctor knows a druggie when he sees one so he calls the police and they pick up Tyron and Harry. They go to some prison boot camp thing where the warden is trying to figure out of everyone's ok to work. Tyrone, having withdrawls, reluctantly agrees, but Harry's arm is really bugging him, so they ship him to another hospital. They conclude that they need to amputate.
Sara, who ran out of her house in a frenzyed panic, is telling everyone she's gonna be on TV and wants to know where the TV studio is. She winds up in some office, all cracked out, and in her dress I should add, and they call the police. They conclude that she is just some nutcase old lady and they put her into a psych ward.
There, she is treated like a typical crazy lady, having to be force fed and tied down to the bed. The doctor says they tried every type of medicine on her but nothing is taking (I wonder why) so they have no choice but to give her electro shock treatment.
Then we get such a wonderful montage of Harry's arm being chopped off, Tyron throwing up while doing Sing-Sing work and Sara being electrocuted. What about Marion?
She was invited to Big Tim's party, but as a stripper, along with another girl who no doubt needs a fix. And the party goers, all men of course, make them do some pretty fucked up sexual things. This is also included in the montage.
In the end, Tyrone is in prison, Harry doesn't have an arm, Sara is just drugged out of her mind, and Marion, I guess is suppose to have the happiest ending of them all, has her drugs. Jesus.
Few things to point out: The Koronos Quartet did the soundtrack, so there was a lot of cellos in the movie. Also, Big Tim was played by the big black dude who was Mary's step-dad in "There's Something About Mary". Oh and you see his ass, along with Marlon Wayan's ass, in this movie. Oh, and you see Jennifer Connelly's cootchie. Well, I think that's what it was. I noticed in the beginning I was gonna have one problem: I had to rent this at a Blockbuster, who is known to pass out edited versions of movies and, lo and behold, I got the edited version.
Now I gotta try to figure out what I really think of this movie. Ok, let me try this. This movie was very brillantly directed and acted. Darren Aronofsky really showed us what it was like to trip your balls of on various drugs. And plus I think this is a good movie to scare kids into never doing drugs again. And I am tempted to watch the unedited unrated version, but I dunno if I can suffer through the last half hour again.
Shudders.
4 stars.
"Requiem For A Dream" on IMDb.com:
http://www.imdb.com/titles/tt0180093/