Wow. This was quite something. Quite depressing, in fact, but also quite bloody good. One of the production companies involved in this film is called Thousand Words (as in ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, I assume) and Requiem for A Dream proves the accuracy of that saying indisputably.

Director Darren Aronofsky knows how to tell a story visually. This tale of addiction grips you by the throat and drags you into the downward spiral that the four main characters are caught in. How does he do that? By combining extreme close ups with sharp sounds and very sharp editing for one (he calls it hip-hop montage).

Ellen Burstyn plays the lonely, widowed mother of heroin-addict Harry (Jared Leto) and when the film starts we see her hiding in her bedroom, watching Harry steal her television set (obviously not for the first time) through the keyhole. Aronofsky uses split-screen editing very effectively in scenes like this. It’s not like Woodstock split screen where you don’t know where to look because you always seem to be missing something, no, this has been thought out and each side of the screen compliments the other somehow making you feel more involved with what’s going on.

Harry spends his time scrounging money, shooting up with his friend Tyrone and making love to his beautiful girlfriend, Marian (Jennifer Connelly). They develop a plan that will make them rich: the same plan every junkie has – to deal. Meanwhile Harry’s TV-addicted mum gets a call that she’s going to be on a television show. Time to lose some weight. Dieting proves to be too hard, so she finds a doctor that prescribes pills “that make you not want to eat”. We all know about “mother’s little helper” of course, but she doesn’t seem to be aware that she’s taking speed followed by downers to sleep. It works though and the weight starts to fly off.

We see her manically cleaning the apartment, with speeded up and slowed down action which almost makes you feel the speed running through her veins. It simulates the feelings involved in using certain drugs so much better than all those blurry, wobbly ‘drunk’ shots seen in many other films.

Harry, his mum, his girlfriend and his bestfriend spend the last 3 minutes of the film coming to a mind-blowing parallel climax of despair and destitution which leaves you gasping for fresh air when the closing titles come up.

****1/2 out of 5

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