Despair and the Refrigerator

(This blog has been published before as a winning review in the "dearcinema" site, link :http://dearcinema.com/requiem-for-a-dream-despair-and-the-refrigerator/)

Author's Note: I don’t write many reviews but sometimes when you shaken to the core, you need to write. This post is about the magnificent "Requiem for a dream".

It was inevitable, the refrigerator will always remind me of the terrors of drug abuse but then I am not complaining. Narcotics remain one of the most abusive scare that is galling human society today and it was an honorable effort from Aronofsky, with the Russian name and the Brooklyn background, to portray the desperation and simple ambitions gone wrong of the characters first created by the incomparable Herbert Selby of the ‘Last exit to Brooklyn’ fame. Selby is known to paint a bleak picture of desperation with the characters wanting the simple pleasures of life, sometimes to look thinner, sometimes to be appreciated. A little dream of a little house filled with pleasures and a picture of happiness around. Nothing that is unattainable right but then in Selby’s world the small dreams turn into a nightmare before even they ripen and a requiem is written before even they have their five minutes of happiness. But me, branding it depressing and demoralizing and absolutely disturbing, doesn’t stop me from absolutely idolizing it and this movie generally marches into my list of the top ten movies with its sad requiem played all over.

I cannot speak enough about the movie and the plot. The plot is simplistic with four main protagonists each having their small sweet desires sugarcoated with niggling ambitions but then as in life nothing turns up as expected. An old mother, Sara, played brilliantly by the amazing Ellen Burstyn, residing in downtown Brooklyn spends all the time in front of the television or sunning in front of the old dilapidated building with the other old ladies. Her only ambition is to be able to fit into the old red dress that she wore for her son’s graduation and appear in a television program that she obsesses over. The son, Harry played by Jared Letto, wants to open a boutique with his designer girlfriend Marion (the beautiful Jennifer Connelly). To get the money and partly satisfy his and his friends’ heroin addiction, he enters into a drug dealership with Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). Sara starts taking prescription drugs from a seedy doctor to get thinner and fit into the red dress. As summer transcends into fall, their condition starts becoming precarious and they descend further into gloom and despair. The movie spans across winter and our main protagonists have become hopeless in their desperate attempts to redeem themselves. Without spoiling your watch by going into further details, I will leave you guys here with the story and digress to the cast and the crew.

The actors are simply brilliant, no two thoughts about that. Ellen Burstyn, who has won the academy awards, acting in Scorsese’s ‘Alice doesn’t live here any more’ is brilliant as Sara the neurotic but loving mother who dreams of her son getting a good job and settling down with some beautiful girl. Jared Letto and Marlon Wayans are great with their restrain and controlled performances, sometimes high on drugs, some other times down with life. But I have to speak for Jennifer Connelly, she is brilliant as the sweet girl dreaming of a happy family but with her life culminating as a prostitute pimping her body and aspirations for dirty old men for a little heroin and some dollars.

Darren Aronofsky is brilliant, one of the greatest young directors working in Hollywood. His brilliance is stamped all over the film. The narration is crisp and keeps one engaged, the camera is voyeuristic and follows the protagonists around with short shots, the mood is somber and he keeps up the despair and by the end it becomes so strong that you can literally touch it with your heart. The editing is simply mind-blowing, I have never seen a better-edited movie and I fail to understand why it was overlooked for a nomination. The sequence towards the end, in which all the four protagonists’ life run interweaved with the devilish soul stirring music piece, is the best intense moment that I have ever seen and its etched in my mind for a long, long time I think. This brings me to the music and I cannot but adulate Clint Mansell for the immortal music that he has provided.

I can go on and on about the little scenes strewn all over that affected me, and anyone who has seen this movie. Remember the scene with Sara and the refrigerator where she hallucinates that the refrigerator is moving forward to eat her and then the walls of her house tumble down with the actors of the television including herself, who she imagines being on TV take over and jeer her for being fat. I was touched by that scene when she mumbles, “Am an old woman” and at the fact that she was jeering herself for being miserable. Then there was the terrifying scream of Marion inside the bathtub with bubbles floating around. I even found the opening sequence funny, Tyron and Harry dragging the television to the used store and selling it for some easy money. But the last twenty minutes take the cake, they disturb the mind to the core and the intensity of the visuals are enough to leave you in a state of suspended animation and wide disbelief for days to come.

One of my friends, who was a regular user of marijuana stopped smoking on seeing the movie and another called me at four AM in the morning complaining of sleepless nights. That’s what a good movie can do to you; make you think about it forever. For anyone who wasn’t watched the movie please do watch it, There can be nothing better than being shaken to the core, once, every time.

Rating: 10/10

Advices if watching on DVD:
· Watch it preferably in the night just before you sleep in a closed room and ALONE.
· Please Watch it one sitting and without telephone or anything else bothering you.