#1 Requiem for a Dream

Sometimes the simple mention of a certain movie can bring immediate images to your head. However, with Requiem for a Dream, despite the many incredible things that can be experienced with the eyes, the first thing that enters my head is the music. It is so memorable that it has been used dozens of times since, such as in a trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. But I don't care about how many times it's been ripped off. Just the thought of the string music that plays softly throughout the film until its eruption in the conclusion literally manages to give me goosebumps. That's how powerful this movie is.

Requiem for a Dream is about addiction. The characters all go through the physical addiction of drugs in order to attain the most basic human addictions; like love, money and fame. In that way Requiem for a Dream isn't simply an anti-drug movie, but almost an anti-aspiration movie. Not that people shouldn't go after their goals, but that they can't be delusional.

It's a very fine line to make a film with a moral that doesn't come off as preachy. Yet I think this movie attains this because the protagonists aren't bad people. Worse yet, they're scarily relatable. The movie doesn't come off as fake. It's just a man, his best friend, his girlfriend and mom all trying to make it(whatever "it" is) in Coney Island.


There really is not much that needs to be said about the plot. Not that it isn't an incredible story. Its beauty is in the fact that there's just so little to talk about. It's just like any Shakespearean tragedy. Every character wants to be powerful or loved, but their tragic flaws will stop them.

Jared Leto is Harry Goldfarb and his best friend Tyrone is played by Marlon Wayans. Harry and Tyrone are junkies who are trying to deal their way out of their addictions. The very good looking Jennifer Connelly plays Marion, who eventually has to deal her own body. All of their performances are incredible, which is something that is expected from Leto and Connelly but surprising from a Wayans brother.

Yet the most tragic character is Sara Goldfarb played by Ellen Burstyn. Burstyn's performance has got to be one of the greatest that I have ever seen from an actress. Her character's drugs of choice are diet pills. This isn't something that is given to her off the street. It's sold to her in an infomercial starring that guy who always plays the bad guy in early Adam Sandler movies. By her doctor that ignores her pleas for help when she freaks out in his office. And by her friends and a world that encourages her to destroy her mind for her body.

Sara's addiction is perhaps the most educational simply because it's legal. It is not based off of the channels that kids are told to avoid. It comes from inside the system. They should show movies like this in place of something like Thirteen in schools. But they never would.

Darren Aronofsky is a film-making god. Even if the plot of his movies, such as The Fountain, can be really convoluted, you cannot deny how masterful this man is at creating the world he is looking for. If a character is doing a drug that makes them hyper, Aronofsky recreates that sensation with fast, zoomed-in cuts, along with a perfectly timed background soundtrack. His pacing is so wonderful that you can tell how the shots in the movie change along with the characters; whether it's Sara having a hallucination or Harry and Marion being strung out. The camera, music and characters all seem to spin in the same direction.

All of these aspects lead the story to a place that may seem extreme, but is befitting for each character. It is not a spoiler to suggest that the characters never succeed in their goals. Merriam-Webster dictionary says that a requiem is a "musical composition in honor of the dead". The very title states that the characters aspirations are dead before they began. Stillborn. The dream never had a shot. And this movie is the song for its funeral.