Want to scare your kids away from drugs? Show them "Requiem for a Dream"

Few films pack the power to scare you straight and make you think twice about indulging in the illicits like "Requiem for a Dream," Darren Aronofsky's visceral attack on the senses via cinema. Last night, our CineVerse group performed a toxicology report and deduced that this film tested positive for the following ideas:

WHAT OTHER FILMS DO YOU THINK OF AFTER WATCHING “REQUIEM FOR A DREAM”?

·       Trainspotting

·       The Basketball Diaries

·       Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

·       Spun

·       Pulp Fiction

·       Oslo, August 31^st

·       Midnight Cowboy

·       Repulsion

·       Traffic

·       Drugstore Cowboy

·       Blow

·       Leaving Las Vegas

·       Days of Wine and Roses

HOW IS REQUIEM FOR A DREAM DIFFERENT FROM MANY OF THOSE OTHER FILMS, ESPECIALLY THE ONES DEPICTING DRUG USE AND ADDICTION?

·       Unlike some of those aforementioned movies, including Trainspotting, this film has a pointed agenda: to depict drug use and addiction as negative, damaging and dangerous; other movies sometimes glorify drug use and the effects of getting high.

·       This picture is unrelentingly bleak and pessimistic; in fact, it’s more akin to a horror movie than a drama or cautionary tale.

·       This film uses stylistic techniques with camera, editing, sound and music to help tell its story and to create, as phrased by Roger Ebert, “a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through is subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel.”

ARONOFSKY USES SPECIAL CINEMATIC METHODS TO TRY TO GET YOU TO FEEL AND EXPERIENCE WHAT THE CHARACTERS ARE EXPRERIENCING AND TO PROVIDE A MORE SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETATION. WHAT ARE THE SPECIFIC TECHNIQUES EMPLOYED BY THE FILMMAKER TO HELP TELL THIS STORY AND GET YOUR ATTENTION?

·       Hip-hop montage, as it’s called, which utilizes rapid cuts, similarly to an MTV video or edgy commercial. A typical movie may have 600 cuts; this film has more than 2,000.

·       Consider how the scenes and shots shorten in duration as the movie progresses, so that, near the ending of the film, we get increasingly rapidly juxtaposed shots—the effect of which is to ratchet up the tension and anxiety.

·       Long tracking shots, with the camera sometimes attached to the character so we can see and feel his/her movements and rhythm. In this way, the camera becomes more subjective.

·       Split-screen to juxtapose two or more characters and see how they’re coexisting or contrasting.

·       Time-lapse photography to quickly depict the passing of time

·       Hallucinatory images showcasing distorted visions of reality and disturbing imagery.

·       Alternation between extreme close-ups and extreme distance from the action.

·       Excellent use of sound effects and sound design to exaggerate the hollowness and fear the characters feel; consider the sounds of metal doors closing, an off-the-hook phone, and cash registers ringing.

HOW DO THE FILMMAKERS GET US TO SYMPATHIZE AND CARE FOR THE CHARACTERS, DESPITE THEIR MANY UNREDEEMING QUALITIES?

·       Through use of subjective camera; we see things through the characters eyes and become more complicit in and voyeuristic to their actions and mistakes. We get to step inside their shoes, thanks to the aforementioned techniques used, which makes it easier to root for and/or pity these people.

·       Through the smart casting of Ellyn Burstyn and the writing of her character: she functions as the heart of the movie. While we may be less inclined to empathize with her addicted-from-the-start son and his girlfriend, for example, we see how she starts out as a non-addict and is negatively transformed throughout the picture. She shows how normal people don’t start out like junkies.

WHAT THEMES ARE PUT UNDER THE MICROSCOPE IN REQUIEM FOR A DREAM?

·       Addiction and dependency, not just to drugs, but to material dreams, vanity, television, sex, sugar, and various forms of consumption.

·       How the “American Dream” of happiness is unattainable and impossible to achieve for many, especially when they pursue that dream through the mode of instant gratification.

·       We are each alone and alienated in this world—a world that can be so terrifying as to make us want to return to the womb for comfort and solace (think about the final shots of characters curling up into fetal positions).

·       The eye becomes an important symbol in echoing these themes: we see how a pupil becomes black and dilated when reality is artificially altered; and we also see how the blue color in the iris is a reflection of a blue sky, which suggests an idyllic existence of happiness and a natural state of reality at the same time.

·       Aronofsky was quoted as saying, about this film: “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."

OTHER FILMS BY DARREN ARONOFSKY

·       Pi (1998)

·       The Fountain (2006)

·       The Wrestler (2008)

·       Black Swan (2010)

·       Noah (2014)