2AM favourite Films - Marianna's Choice

Here at 2AM Films, we love all things cinematic and over the next few weeks, a different 2AMer will take on the filmic chalice and tell us their favourite films...

This Week its our receptionist Marianna Segenhout's choice....

Current Favourite Film: Requiem for a Dream

Production year: 2000
Country: USA
Cert (UK): 18
Runtime: 102 mins
Directors: Darren Aronofsky

Requiem For A Dream takes a raw look at the lives of four addicts and how their addictions fuel their own delusion as well as the depths to which they will degrade themselves to realize the unattainable.

Ellen Burstyn, plays Sara Goldfarb, a woman whose solitary life (interrupted by visits from her junkie son to take money) is changed by the offer to appear on television. Convinced she must lose weight in order to fit into a red dress for her appearance, she becomes addicted to diet pills and sleeping pills in the process. She’s a TV junkie whose son Harry is a heroin addict trying to make enough money to keep himself, his girlfriend Marion, and their friend Tyrone high.

The film follows their harrowing descent: Sara pops pills and hallucinates that her TV and fridge are attacking her, Harry steals and envisions the perfect score, while Marion sleeps with her creepy "therapist" and other distressing debasements to stay high.

Watching them feed their cravings for the junk of TV culture and heroin is both difficult and exhausting. The acting deserves distinction.

Burstyn(Mother) especially brings a heartfelt, unselfish performance to the film as an innocent compelled by the same forces as her son. It’s horrid to watch her transformation and she is completely unrecognizable by the end of the film.

Jared Leto demonstrates a vulnerability and complete impetuousness of someone unaware of his true dilemma.

Finally, Jennifer Connelley is very good and stands out in her willingness to take on a role that is consuming. She seems funereal and doomed, contrasting well with the almost childlike Harry. Her performance warrants much better roles in the future.

The film was shot in a series of dreamlike images in infrared tones. Their dismal surroundings are brightened by images of better times and places.
Aronofsky’s sophomore effort is much more polished than Pi, while his taste for conspiracy remains.

The Editing is fantastical, with some scenes made up of hundreds of short shots, rythmically pieced together to create an feast of visual mahyhem, beautifully enhanced by the dramatic score of Clint Mansell.

Aronofsky’s Requiem For A Dream is a brilliant, traumatic piece that perceptively captures the subconscious of people whose dreams are destroying them.

It is a hard film to swallow but I truly believe everyone should watch it at least once, to see Aronofsky at his best.