Requiem for a Dream (2000)

by Darren Aronofsky

An Analysis

Sara Goldfarb and son Harry

Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky's direction of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s novel, interprets the distinct spirals into addiction of four Coney Islanders--Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and the three closest people in his life: his mother Sara Goldfard (Ellen Burstyn); his best friend Tyrone "Ty" C. Love (Marlon Wayans), and his girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly). Harry, whose life is going nowhere, aside from having a sultry girlfriend, occasionally steals his mother's television for pawning. Sara Goldfarb's life is without purpose and has little hope.  Financial support from Marion's parents is waning while Marion's fashion design career has yet to launch. Ty fantasizes about making his long-gone mother proud. Like Harry, Ty has done nothing with his life but land one of the hottest-bodied young women around, Alice (Aliya Campbell).

A requiem is music and ceremony for catholic funeral masses. This Requiem for a Dream is indeed a funeral service for its characters' hopes and dreams, and only we are in attendance.  

Harry and Marion cuddle

Requiem for a Dream's storytelling is driven by Aronofsky's cinematic leitmotifs -- styles that signify similar themes, places, or characters when seen or heard. Unlike in The Empire Strikes Back, where each musical style refers to a character (e.g. Darth Vader and his "Imperial March") Requiem's leitmotifs, both visual and aural, signify similar narrative themes and feelings within and among characters.

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Please see the film before reading further

Addiction

Each character endures one or more addictions. Sara has an addiction to TV, then to her newfound popularity among the gaggle of old women in the building, then to fitting into her red dress, and finally to her weight-loss pills, 3/4 of which are uppers. As an abandoned widow, she is the most vulnerable of the four.

Harry and Ty, hocking Sara's TV.

Harry is addicted to making his girlfriend happy. To make Marion's dreams come true, and to supply his "TV junkie" mother with a fix (a new TV, "from Macy's!"), Harry deals drugs on the street. Harry, already a heroin user, also becomes addicted to heroin, which literally costs him an arm, if not yet a leg.

Although Ty is a heroin user and dealer, the drug is not his downfall.  Ty's inner pressure to please his  fantastic mother becomes his addiction.  

Arnold with Marion

Marion, a heroin user, has lost financial support of her parents, due to reports from her unethical analyst, Arnold (Sean Gullette). Her dream of opening a storefront for her clothing designs pressures Harry into dealing drugs. Her newly-regular access to heroin becomes her second, more powerful addiction. Marion soon takes to being a prostitute-for-drugs to wealthy Big Tim (Keith David), and then as a hired pornographic party girl who finds herself in a double-dildo anal display, surrounded by engorged suits and fellow nude party girls. Fallen from her dreams as a clothing designer, she ends the film naked.  

Aronofsky-as-Auteur

Aronofsky, just two films into his career, has developed techniques and patterns as an auteur. He is loyal to cast and crew, returning many from Pi (2008).  Requiem's visual style is recognizably from the loins of Pi. And Aronofsky's fascination with hallucination and fantasy scenes continues.

Strung-out Sara Goldfarb shot with fisheye lens

Requiem's expressive visual feast betrays Aronofsky as its director; with a style similar to his debut Pi, but far more advanced, as Requiem has its own visual language. Aronofsky returns to the All That Jazz-like heroin-injection and pill-popping sequences from Pi. Requiem uses, as does Pi, a fish-eye lens. In Requiem it is used twice, first during Sara's experience of the lurching refrigerator, then in her next scene, a time-warped second visit to the diet doctor's office. Aronofsky has his actors, and one prop, wear the camera, including once in a Pi-like chase sequence, a technique used in John Frankenheimer's masterpiece Seconds (1966). Last, five times the screen fades to white.

1. After Harry and Marion's split-screen love session, the screen fades to white.  
2. Marion, bottom-nude before a mirror, is sad, injects heroin, then feels the euphoria of a heroin high as the screen fades to white.
3. After Sara and the gaggle mail her TV application, the screen fades to white.  
4. After Ty returns with the heroin score, he and Harry get high together.  Their euphoria fades to white.
5. Harry's arm is sawed off, then the screen fades to white and into his Marion-on-the-pier fantasy.

These fades-to-white are probably a reference to Pi, in which a fade-to-white is a metaphor for Max staring at the sun, by which he metaphorically blinds himself. Perhaps Sara, putting her dream into one white envelope, and the three young adults who turn to heroin or each other for their happiness, are staring into the sun, blinding themselves to the world.

Mr. Rabinowitz

Aronofsky has Pi's primary cast return in Requiem for a Dream, albeit in briefer roles.  Mark Margolis (the mentor) is Mr. Rabinowitz, the pawnbroker (named after the film's editor); Sean Gullette (Max) is Marion's ex-sugar daddy Arnold; and Ben Shenkman (Lenny Meyer) is Dr. Spencer, who tends to Sara toward movie's end.  Requiem also returns much of Pi's supporting cast, including Samia Shoihib (Devi, the young woman next door) as Sara's diet nurse; Ajay Naidu (Farouk) as the mailman; and Joanna Gordon who reprises her role as the landlady, Mrs. Ovadia. Pi's original music composer, Clint Mansell, triumphantly returns for Requiem.  

Last, Aronosky seems to establish a trend of not trusting religion. In Pi, the Hassidic Jews were one of the two villainous groups. Requiem features an unseen drug connection named "Angel," who time and again provides the materials or information for Ty, Harry, and Marion to bring harm to themselves.

Leitmotifs

Aronofsky uses visual and aural phrasing, or leitmotifs, to emphasize relationships, to show fantasies, daydreams, & hallucinations, and to draw parallels between characters' emotions that each experiences at different times in the film, or to draw connections among characters at the same time in the film.

Aronofsky illustrates connectedness and relationships via several visual phrasings. Seen six times in the film, the split screen brings the two subjects in each half of the screen, already close, closer together, often illustrating a dependent, co-dependent, or enabling relationship.  

Split-screen: Sara's dependence on diet pills

1. The first split screen occurs early. Sara locks herself in a closet while Harry demands the key for the locked-up TV that he is about to pawn. We later understand their co-dependent relationship as Sara, ever lonely, always buys back her TV from boardwalk pawn broker, Mr. Rabinowitz.  
2. The second split screen shows Harry and Marion in bed in a creative and sensual scenes of caressing.  Though the scene is beautiful, we shall soon see that the relationship is codependent.  
3. We also see Sara split-screened with the fridge--she craves the food inside.  
4. Harry and Tyrone shoot up together, split screened and side-by-side on the couch. About to go into heroin-dealing together, they are co-dependent.  
5. We later see Sara, who has abandoned the egg-and-grapefruit diet, split-screened first with her new diet pills, and then with her cream cheese roll--a sort of saying hello to the former and a goodbye to the latter.
6. We do not see another split-screening until the very end, when Ty, curling up into the fetal position, is split-screened with his mother of years past. It is not a true split screen--it's two separate semi-transparent shots, but it looks like a split-screen.

As mentioned earlier, Aronofsky has three of the characters, and Sara's original TV, each wear the camera once. Aronofsky was forced to cut the scene he shot of Harry wearing the camera.

Marion, returning from sex with Arnold

1. The TV wears the camera early, to show the faces of Harry and Ty, who are about to pawn it for heroin.
2. After the hit on Ty's drug lord in the limo, Ty runs down an alley wearing the camera, face splattered with blood.  This technique keeps us focused on his terror-covered face as the rest of the world jerks about behind him.  
3. As Marion returns from having $2,000 sex with Arnold, her corrupt therapist, and after we have watched Harry squirm and shoot up from the emotional pain of the Arnold situation, Marion, terrified of what this says about her and what it means to their relationship, wears the camera down the hallway and into the elevator. In the elevator she briefly wears the camera on her back, showing the doors closing in front of her, and showing us how small she feels.
4. When Sara takes a personal-best four pills at once, and the fridge comes alive, bolting at her, Sara is wearing the camera, enhancing our sense of Sara's surreal experience of terror.

Twice Aronofsky uses an overhead, rotating camera, pointed straight down to connote romance, that the two lovers have enveloped each other. It also marks the last time the two involved in the scene are shown in love.

Marion and Harry high, together

1. The rotating, "ceiling fan" camera is first used when showing Ty and Alice nude in bed, caressing. We never see Alice again.
2. The last scene before Harry and Marion's first argument, we see their heads ear-to-ear, bodies opposed 180 degrees. They are high, but muster love. 

Introducing Marion Silver

Aronofsky's use of muted colors almost makes Requiem his second black-and-white film. His rare use of vibrant color often depicts a character's hope or dream. Marion is introduced to us wearing Yale blue, looking to the sky, shot against an Irish-green lawn. In cinema, looking up to a blue sky often represents hope for one's dreams. Not much later, muddling about a muted green and taupe apartment, Sara Goldfarb pulls out a bold red dress, signifying her television dream. Last, during Ty's daydream of his child self, running to his mother's arms, his mother is wearing a vibrant white-and-blue muumuu. She is his literal dream.

Sara, lost, with the world at high speed.

Sara an Ty share a leitmotif that shows them at low, helpless, confused times. When thrown in jail then prison, Ty's face is pressed between bars. His eyes wander, considering his place, as his cell-mates mull behind at a great, time-elapsed speed. Similarly, having popped her last ineffective pills, Sara stumbles the streets, grasping as pedestrians pass her at the same high speeds as Ty's cell-mates. 

Sara, after Electroconvulsive Therapy

The film ends with all four characters curling into the fetal position, one after the other, each alone.  Harry curls after he wakes to realize his arm's fate. Marion, back from her humiliating escapade, withdraws a sizable bag of heroin from her pants, then curls, pressing the bag to her chest with both hands, where Harry once was. Ty, in prison, missing his mother, curls up, and we see the aforementioned split screen with his mother of years ago. Sara, in the hospital, hair lopped off, and exhausted from ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy), curls up as well.  Each wants to be safe.

Harry and Marion, suddenly distant

Twice character spacing is used to connote distance in a relationship.  First, Harry's second scene with his mother shows a personal, uncomfortable distance between them, regardless of their hug. Later, after Marion has had sex with Arnold, she returns.  They sit on opposite sides of the couch.  Their bond has broken.

Ty and Harry playing Keep Away with a cop's gun

Aronofsky uses "If-only-I-could" fantasy scenes, much like we saw the previous year in Doug Liman's Go (1999) and would see in Stephen Frears' High Fidelity (2000). We see it twice, first when Harry steals the cop's gun and, with Ty, plays Keep Away. Did Aronofsky or Selby know that the game is sometimes called Piggy in the Middle? We next see this technique used in Marion's second dinner with Arnold, wishing she could stab a fork through his hand.

Daydream with Marion

Requiem also features pleasant daydreams. Harry dreams of running to Marion at the end of Coney Island's pier. Ty daydreams of childhood times with his mother.

Requiem displays hallucinations beyond camera effects, and they all belong to Sara and her food battles.  She sees through the fridge's door so as to view the food inside. After that, she attempts to sleep, only to imagine cupcakes and bagels flying at her.  Later the fridge lurches at her, demanding attention. It later roars as it turns into a giant mouth. Last, of course, the entire apartment merges with the TV show.  Addiction to wanting to be on TV, weight loss, and speed conspire to make Sara's life distressed as never before.

Marion, all better after shooting up

The theme that speaks to the relief heroin provides is shared by Marion and then Harry. Marion's experience is mentioned above, in the sequence that fades-to-white: Marion is forlorn, injects heroin, then feels euphoric.  Later, after Harry and and his mom have had their difficult second scene, Harry leaves in a cab, shaken and upset. He injects heroin in the cab, and we see him feeling that all is better.

Last among the leitmotifs is Clint Mansell's Kronos Quartet-assisted score. The first scene between Sara and Harry has sounds of an orchestra warming and tuning for a performance--we are about to experience a requiem. Aronofsky returns several times to Mansell's marching-to-the-underworld, strings-heavy theme that follows the orchestral warm-up. It is vital to the film's feel of anxious, imminent, unavoidable doom. That theme, after being introduced early, does not enter again until Sara and the gaggle mail the TV application--a seminal moment in her downfall. After much time away from it, the theme is thrust into Ty's running-from-the-limo scene. It is next heard during the aforementioned sequence of Marion returning from Arnold, Sara applying lipstick, and Ty missing his mother. It last is heard starting with Ty's return to the workhouse locker room, carrying through the end of the film and its credits.

Connection Sara and Harry

Though they live blocks apart, Harry and his mother Sara share only three scenes, and keeping them connected throughout the film is necessary for us to understand why both are in the picture.  For instance, so much in-film time elapses between Harry's visits--an entire summer--that we are surprised when Harry does not know about his mother's forthcoming TV appearance.  

Of course, scenes often alternate from Sara's scenes to Harry's scenes, and increase in frequency as the end approaches, but other techniques are used.  Not long after Harry decides to buy his mother a new TV, Harry and Marion's heroin shoot-up montage morphs into a montage of Sara's pill-popping. Later, the score, whether the strings theme or the rave-like theme, plays without break over several sequences of scenes. One example begins with Marion's return from Arnold's, to Sara's bad-lipstick application, then to Ty, clutching a picture frame, missing his mother. All three editing techniques serve to keep Sara and Harry connected.

Harry and Sara's final scene is the film's last.  Harry is able to rejoin his mother, if only in her TV dream--"I love you too, ma." This is her fetal-curled fantasy. The show was only ever in her head, and only she would dream of announcing Harry as about to be married, something she pushed in their second scene. She knows not of Harry's spiral. Of course, given that the reconciliation happens within the TV show, we question ECT's effectiveness. Sara somehow finds a bit of hope to grasp, but to what will she grasp when she learns Harry's fate?

Since Requiem for a Dream...

With a Hollywood-scale budget, Requiem is Aronofsky's first venture beyond low-budget films. While casting Academy Award winner Burstyn, rising stars Connelly and Leto, and comedic actor Wayans in his first dramatic part, Aronofsky has confronted the challenge of higher expectations. Requiem's impact on its actors has been substantial. Burstyn received her sixth Academy Award nomination for her difficult exploration as Sara Goldfarb, while Connelly used her success in Requiem to ascend to an Academy-Award winning role in A Beautiful Mind (2001) and is a consistent contender for the cinema's best female roles. Wayans has squandered his Black Reel-nominated performance  on a career of terrible comedies. And Leto has averaged one film per year since, choosing to concentrate on his band 30 Seconds to Mars and its three post-Requiem albums. Aronofsky has since made three more films, including Black Swan (2010), which many critics predict will earn a Best Picture Oscar nomination.

  

Each time one watches Requiem for a Dream, one sees something new and ingenious. Introduce it to your friends, and don't let any of them, or yourself, get away with saying of it the clichéd "it's depressing." There is too much cinematic mastery to behold for viewers to settle on such labels. 

Requiem for a Dream trailer