Another disturbing movie about drugs. Look folks, I don't get drugs and I don't normally get movies about them. But, I liked this movie, though it could have been better.
The movie follows two parallel plots, with parallel tragedies. The similarities are a matter of form. Plot A deals with an elderly lady whose husband, I presume, is dead. She lives alone and ritualistically drags a lawnchair out to sit on the sidewalk with a gang of other old ladies. Her son, the main character in Plot B, is a junky although she loves him dearly. The majority of her life is spent in front of the tele. She watches an annoying game show. Then one day she is selected to attend the game show. She is filled with ideals and visions, all of the sudden she is the most popular lady in her group and she wants to wear her favourite red dress. Of course, she can no longer fit into her red dress. She goes on a diet, then unsatisfied by the diet she visits a little man in a white coat. And the descent begins.
Plot B is about the son, who we know from the onset is a junky. His life is spent pawning his mothers television for drugs. His mother then, without fail, buys back the television and the ritual continues. The son and his friend 'Tyrone' get the idea that they could start selling the junk in order to fund their habit. They are quite successful, so successful that the son buys mom a big screen tele. The third character in this plot is perhaps the most tragic. The son's girlfriend, a junky from a well off family, seems to really love the son. The two of them plot of one day running a business. They want to sell the clothes the girlfriend designs and will make. All seems to be going well. Then, all of the sudden, the supply runs dry. And the descent begins.
What is remarkable about this movie is the movement and the photography. The whole movie moves according to the seasons. Summer, described above, is full of dreams and possibility. Fall begins the descent to winter. This, of course, is not all that thrilling. Beneath the macro movement of the seasons is the micro movement of the characters. Both plots go round and round in parallel in the search for the next fix. Each sequence begins with a disturbing set of close up pictures of drug-doing.
What really got me, was the lingering of the dream and the haunting images that capture the idea of the dream. The movie has pictures of great beauty made more beautiful by the images of great horror that capture the descent and ultimately the underworld that the characters descend to.
I have to comment on the characters themselves. They were, for a movie about drugs, quite human. It was their dreams and aspirations that made them so. The drugs were what made them subhuman. The constant reminder of the dreams helped to keep us aware that these were people and maintains the sympathy needed for us to keep watching the movie through the horrible winter season.
This is not a meditation on a theme, or the exploration of an idea. Requiem for a Dream really is a requiem. It is a tragedy in the grand sense. It sings out to the soul of the lost dreams and ideals that have died because of human stupidity. There is a certain gruesome naturalism that tries to tell the dreams to rest in peace, to forgive these humans, they know not what they do. The movement of nature only reinforces this idea.
Requiem for a Dream cannot really be a tragedy in the grand sense, I lied. Don't get me wrong it is tragic and tries to be a tragedy. The problem is that there cannot be a character like Antigone, Oedipus or Hamlet. The junkies are not being tossed around by nature. My conservative right wing sensibilities tell me that doing drugs is a choice. Drugs is not a part of the tragic nature of man. It is part of the stupid nature of some stupid people. My idealism tells me that some people can reach their dreams, in fact that many people can - even people that have done drugs. Dreams in this movie make junkies human, it is the junk that stops the junkies from being human. Sub-humans, to carry on the metaphor, cannot be the subject of proper tragedy. Tragedy must appeal to our universal human nature. Look to the Greeks or to Shakespeare for tragedy, not Hollywood.
This is a good movie, but I am bound by my rating scale. The movie passes, but the film suffers from the deficiency that I've just mentioned. The movement and photography ought to give this film four stars, but I cannot in could conscience ignore the official Chris' Choice scale. Requiem for a Dream has surpassed my expectations of a movie about drugs, but it has problems. It does not meet my expectations of a tragedy. The problems weaken the pass,
On the official Chris' Choice scale Requiem for a Dream gets two stars.
**
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