[ENG] Requiem for a dream - a nightmare in disguise - SPOILERS
uwaga: niektóre posty będą pisane w języku angielskim, jeśli medium, które konsumowałam, było właśnie w tym języku :)
In Poland, school children read ,,My, dzieci z dworca Zoo” (,,Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo”, Christiane F.) and ,,Pamiętnik narkomanki”, Barbara Rosiek. In United States of America, a novel touching on the same issue was written by Hubert Selby Jr. - ,,Requiem for a dream” was published in 1978 by Da Capo Press. Over two decades later ,,Requiem for a dream” got rewritten into a screenplay and put on a big screen.
And a big screen it was - the screen of my own old little laptop, a quarter of a century later, the day I moved into a brand new flat and needed something to watch to wind down a bit. Needless to say - at least to anybody having the most basic understanding of what the movie I’ll be writing about is - it certainly did not help me wind down.
Truth be told, I always had a weird connection to any substance-abuse, addiction stories, books, movies, etc., etc. Well, maybe it’s less weird if we put it into perspective: the collective alcohol addiction that has run in my family through at least 3 generations now, impairing every man connected to me by blood, causing them to traumatize everyone around them. It’s no wonder I’m, in some way, drawn to these stories, sensing a painful familiarity, feeling both disgust and (unwanted?) empathy.
The story in ,,Requiem for a dream” starts like any other addiction story. High, high, high, love, sex and rock’n’roll, baby. We follow our main character - Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), a heroin addict - who steals a TV from his mother, widowed Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), to sell it and, you guessed it, buy some drugs. It’s easy to watch, in this slick, silly beginning. Yeah, sure, we all had some sex ed classes talking about don’t-take-drugs they will do this and this and that to you, your body, your values, your brain, your… everything. We know it! But right now, all we see is Harry getting high with his ridiculously handsome best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), and hanging out with his breathtakingly beautiful girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly). So what if he steals some stupid TV?
And that’s precisely what the problem is. He doesn’t even look like a heroin addict, nor do his close ones. They are gorgeous, funny, witty, they just want to have fun. Until buying drugs and selling them for profit, the little well of happiness and prosperity for all three of them dries up, and we get to see how the withdrawal hits them. The sweats, nervousness, the I’ll do anything to get high again realness hits the viewer like a train. Suddenly we realize that they ARE ADDICTED. That it’s not funny. That it’s literally terrifying and gut wrenching and it brings tears to your eyes because you can see and feel - through the brilliancy of both the screenplay and the actors - how much Harry, Marion and Tyrone struggle.
But we also see a struggle of another person, and that person is no one else than Sara Goldfarb. Seeing her downspiral into diet pills addiction made my heart literally stop at times. Other times, I felt it pounding so hard in my chest, as if it were trying to pump some hope into her through my veins. Sara is a depiction of a much more normalized addiction, but this addiction hides something entirely else. Both widowed and abandoned by her only child, Sara feels lonely, so lonely, that she loses any purpose in her life. Spending her days in front of a TV - the TV stolen at the beginning by her beloved son, and bought back by her - she starts to slowly lose her sanity. When a call, followed by a letter, from her favourite tv show arrives, she suddenly both find a new purpose, and lose it all. Tied up by the only valuable to her memory, the graduation of her son, the time where her husband was still alive, the red dress that she wore, she finds herself incredibly frustrated, when she realizes she just cannot fit into the red dress. And since that’s all that matters - her going live on tv show, her going live on tv show in. the. red. dress. - she falls into a trap of needing to lose weight to gain back who she was before.
Problem is, the pills work. But being slim doesn’t turn back the time. Being slim doesn’t revive your dead husband. Being slim doesn’t un-addict your slave of a heroin son. So Sara - like any other addict, like her son, like his girlfriend, like their friend, needs to take more, just to feel something more than pain, despair, hopelessness. So she does.
Watching ,,Requiem for a dream” is like watching a car crash happening faster and faster, faster faster faster faster harder stronger blood blood screams all these screams why is my heart pounding they can stop it they could’ve stopped this why hadn’t they stopped this they had time god didn’t they see what was happening didn’t they feel why why why WHY STOP STOP RIGHT NOW
stop
But it doesn’t, because why would it? The life goes on, the seasons change, and as it gets colder and colder and the earth is dying, so are our hero(in)s. Metaphorically, at least. At this moment, Sara is absolutely batshit crazy, hallucinating and thinking only about going live on tv, oh and the fridge is moving towards her and wants to eat her, and it’s absolutely fucking terrifying. Marion is selling her body for another shot and some cash, and who’s to blame her? She was asked to do that to get some money for her boyfriend, so he can get them back on their feet, so what does it change if she sleeps with some other dude, or five, or ten, or I don’t know, I don’t remember, I was high as a kite, mr officer. All Tyrone can think about is his mommy, whose picture stands right there, next to his bed. Where is your mommy now, Tyrone? Do you think she’s proud of you, like you told her? And Harry, oh, Harry, why would you inject heroin into an open wound? Why would you do that, Harry? Why would you do that, Harry? Why would you
The car crash is still speeding up, and Sara ends up in psych ward, force fed and electrocuted, still thinking about that FUCKING TV, and Tyrone and Harry get arrested, but Harry’s arm is in such bad state, he gets taken to a hospital, where it gets amputated. And all I could think about at this moment, so desensitized and oversensitized, was well, at least it’d be this much harder for him to use again.
,,Requiem for a dream” is, for me, one of these painful to watch movies, that just stuck with you and eat at you until you pour it all out. It was gruesome and real, it was like a jump into the abyss, but is it abyss if you know what’s really in the dark, deep, deep under you? It’s a nightmare starting off as a glorious dream, it’s a bite into the prettiest cake in the world, only for it to melt on your tongue into mold. It unravels and unravels and you know what will happen next, god you’re so aware, but you can’t stop looking, because you want to be wrong so badly.
The characters in ,,Requiem for a dream” are portrayed so well that the effect they cause is that much painful. The actors were casted perfectly and put so much work into their creations. I was especially stunned by Ellen Burstyn (Sara Goldfarb), so much so that I will be looking into more of her work. The visuals and the soundtrack were out of this world, every detail worked on with so much care and love, fitting so perfectly, taking my feelings to another level. A very, very hard watch, certainly - but one, I feel, also very much needed for many of us, seeking comfort in our own pain.
I know I will spend many more nights consumed by this story, by the powerful parallels, by double screens and metaphors, by simple messages, by suffering so bluntly shown at the end, so carefully hidden at the beginning. I loved absolutely everything about this piece.
by Daria Michalska
Darren Aronofsky//Requiem for a dream//Review
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