This movie is simultaneously one of the greatest and most terrible movies I have ever seen. From the director of Pi and previously mentioned on Friends Recommend The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky. I had heard that it was a depressing movie, but good friend Aaron Gause insisted that I watch it during my senior year of JMU. I agreed, and he said if we watch it in the daytime and hang out and maybe have a beer then it isn't so bad. So I went over to his house to watch Requiem, we put it on, and 15 minutes into it he gets up to go hang out with his roomates and leaves me sitting there for the remainder of the movie. By the time it ended it was dark out, and I was severly depressed. It was a Friday night of my senior year in college, and I remember going back to my apartment and just sitting in my room sulking.
Requiem for a Dream follows the lives of four people who begin the movie as (relatively) mild drug users but over the course of the movie turn into full-fledged addicts. I won't tell you where they all end up, but I'll just tell you that they start in a low but hopeful place and steadily decline over the course of the whole movie. Ellen Burstyn (not Laura Palmer's mother) plays an amazing older woman who gets addicted to caffine pills and it is terrifying. Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, and Jared Leto also play great parts in the film. As upsetting and terrible as the message of the movie is, it is very well done and overall one of the better movies I have seen in my life. It sucks that I swore I would never watch it again. I think it should be shown in all high schools. I really can't imagine anyone wanting to do drugs after watching this movie, and I'm sure it would stop a couple teenagers from considering it. It is dark. Real dark. The music is also fantastic. World-renowned string quartet the Kronos Quartet plays Clint Mansell's score and it is amazing. Really modern string quartet writing with the use of some electronics. It is so good that it was also used in the trailors for the Da Vinci Code and Lord of the Rings 2, I Am Legend, Babylon A.D. and video game Assassin's Creed. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't seen this movie once to see it. You may hate it because of how it makes you feel, but there is no denying that it is a great film. Here is one clip of the soundtrack from youtube:
