Friday, January 5, 2007
Requiem for a Dream
Requiem for a dream is quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. Jennifer Conelly has had better luck with scripts like Labyrinth, and Jared Leto? Who the hell is Jared Leto? Requiem is a tragic story of four main characters traveling along to meet their own remote yet interconnected ends. Connelly and Leto play the roles of Marion and Harry, two heroin addicted lovers who's need to get high becomes more important than their need to not ruin their lives and their relationship. Marlon Wayans, half of the utter morons responsible for Scary Movies 1 and 2, plays Henry's best friend and partner in drug retail. The fourth is Henry's mother Sara Goldfarb played by Ellen Burstyn, who hasn't been in a movie any ones ever heard of since The Exorcist. She plays the part of Henry's delusional television and diet pill addicted mother whose dreams fall short due to her addictions. The plot's predictable and lacks depth and the constant close ups are vomit inducing. As far as I'm concerned director Darren Aronofsky who's, six movie career is far from even mediocre and Jared Leto could fall off of the face of the Earth and I'd forget about them by tomorrow. As far as Connelly's concerned she should have taken David Bowie's proposal in Labyrinth seriously and maybe she could have made something of herself. Ellen Burstyn was in the Exorcist... doomed from the beginning.
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2 comments:
Since you've mentioned it in passing, I believe you should now review Labyrinth in full; specifically, do you feel that Jennifer Connelly, after playing opposite muppets, is allowed to be in a movie about heroin addiction? Or is it okay to destroy precious pieces of my childhood?
When I first saw Requiem I thought it was memorable and unique. And really, in a certain way it is. For those who hold no regard, and even an incredulous attitude towards it I believe they were more or less not susceptible to the aesthetics, which in part is a matter of taste. Objectively speaking, though, the movie relied far too much on aesthetics/theatrics/delivery. The script, I think was terrible: having not read the book, which I would encourage anyone to do, imagine the movie as paper in your hands - the script alone lacks substance and only serves to highlight the obvious. Some parts of the script are touching when paired with the unique layout of the camera, lighting and sentimental music that still contained an ominous parallel to the bliss that was rendered in the musics own "high" sequences. But overall more depth would have needed to be read into the characters via the script for these "touching" moments to really hit. The plot development in terms of the tempo of the tragedy was brilliant in both its delivery and simplicity; the plot development in terms of actual character depth and overall 3-dimensionality of the movie entire was dismal. Plot development is inherently wrapped up in the scenes and script, and the themes of the movie were contrived and rendered no less so by the script. The old lady etching out a sense of self-worth via becoming the victim of a promotional leg in the form of being a contestant on a TV show and making it her delusional contrast to her former life when Harry wasn't a druggie and her husband was alive was too much to take seriously, the two-dimensionality of the other characters dynamics I think were obvious enough to not need mention (druggies as a white-guy/ black guy two man force trying to make it big by selling weight where the only ominous premonition in dialogue was Connelly's "what's the catch?" is laughable even from a wayward just-out-of-teen perspective). As just one other aspect of the aesthetics of the film which corresponded to the weakest aspect of character development (that of Burstyn's), I have to say that the repetition of the "Juice" guy in her TV screen I completely understand was most likely a way to parallel her oncoming dementia to what she saw in that portal. But the delivery of this (and this is the one point where I think the aesthetics were weak) in one single format with the juice guy, including the eventual illusion of the cast and crew appearing in her living room were too far fetched for me to take seriously as a believable aspect of dementia. Art-wise, it perhaps could have been rendered successfully as an obvious mise-en-scene, but from the beginning the manifestation of the juice man as the ONLY thing she sees on her screen renders it too predictable every time it appears to really care by the time this whole aspect reaches its climax. I don't believe the movie was terrible because everything ended up in tragedy, nor because it gave closeups of drug use (I'm not so queasy), nor because I think the aesthetics were terrible. I think it offered something unique in the way it cohesively pitted ominousness against drug induced bliss and made them dance in a sort of aesthetic unity that left an impression. BUT, overall it was a film that had one or two strong aspects and those alone: aesthetics and punch, but all else? Well the rest was weak, and made it a sub-par movie with one great aspect. Like a trio with two really good players and one that drowned the others out in terms of the overall production.
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