'Requiem for a Dream' (2000) Movie review

Requiem for a Dream is a movie directed by Darren Aronofsky featuring Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Ellen Burstyn and Marlon Wayans. Based on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr.

A brutal movie, both because of the subject as well as the aesthetics, about the world of drugs.

This is a story about degradation which, led by the poetry of despair, has become (well deservedly) a cult movie.

Movie Review

This is a movie with a brutal potential for aesthetics: it moves and perverts and degrades and attracts, all in the whirlpool of emotions the characters experience who are submerged in the world of drugs. A misleading “hand camera” film that takes us through the stories of four characters in their four personal hells and the Requiem they all entone together with a social and systemic point of view, because the réquiem is also pertinent socially.

However, what we are interested in here is its brutal potential as a work of art, which it is. It finds its inspiration in literature and transfers a disturbed and modern dream of Thomas De Quincy to the scrreen, in an updated vision of artificial paradises and their descent into hell. There is judgement in the choices made or the morals of the film, but never a condemnation of the characters who are driven by emotions and the meaninglessness of searching for that emotion that can enable us to go on.

Réquiem por un sueño — Requiem for a Dream (2000)

This movie which brought fame to Jared Leto, brings Jennifer Connelly to the fore and she reminds us that the Oscar that Ellen Burstyn had won was not by chance. She nearly did it again in this movie, her acting really deserved it.

Requiem for a Dream is a deeply unconfortable movie because it revolves around two things: moves us and at the same time touches truly unpleasant things and does so with equal talent; challenges and questions and becomes a visually constructed poem thought the degeneration of its elements.

A well merited cult work which today, we wanted to recommend to you.

Our opinion

Marvelously critical, yet brutally moving and beautiful in its degeneration.

Director

Darren Aronofsky (born February 12, 1969) is an American film director, screenwriter and film producer. He attended Harvard University and AFI to study both live-action and animation. He won several film awards after completing his senior thesis film, “Supermarket Sweep”, which went on to become a National Student Academy Award finalist. Aronofsky’s feature debut, π, was shot in November 1997. The low-budget, $60,000 production, starring Sean Gullette, was sold to Artisan Entertainment for $1 million, and grossed over $3 million; Aronofsky won the Directing Award at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival and an Independent Spirit Award for best first screenplay. Aronofsky’s followup, Requiem for a Dream, was based on the novel of the same name written by Hubert Selby, Jr. Read the full bio