A Bleak and Brilliant ‘Requiem’

Hubert Selby Jr. has said of Darren Aronofsky’s startling film of Selby’s 1978 novel “Requiem for a Dream” that it brought him to tears, adding that he believed that “anybody who has lived on this planet will recognize something about themselves in this story.”

Even if you agree wholeheartedly with Selby, who first found recognition with his unforgettable--and unrelenting--”Last Exit to Brooklyn,” you have to add an important qualification: provided you’re willing to submit to a film that is as unremittingly bleak as it is brilliant. You really have to be up for--and open to--this most harrowing of films that dazzles with Aronofsky’s acute command of his medium and of his actors, from whom he demands the utmost and then some.

The great theme here is how the American capacity for a naive self-deception can pack the destructive force of a tornado. In her comfortable if faded Brighton Beach apartment, near that rotting fantasy land, Coney Island, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), a lonely widow, glues herself to her TV--when she’s not having to buy it back from a junk dealer to whom her son Harry (Jared Leto) sells it regularly. Sara constantly watches Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald), an unctuous TV weight-loss guru, whose twin mantras are “No red meat! No refined sugar!”

One day Sara’s mail brings her the news that she’s among a group of people who have been selected to appear on a game show, assuring her that “You’re already a winner!” The letter doesn’t say when she may be summoned to appear, but it never occurs to Sara that she may well never hear from the show again. In an instant Sara is lifted from her despair and becomes a heroine to her neighbors.

Casting back to her happiest memory, she takes out of the closet the bright red dress she wore to her son’s high school graduation. As she can no longer get into it, she goes to a neighborhood weight-loss doctor. Sure enough, she starts losing the pounds swiftly from taking all those little pills, but she also starts losing her mind as well, from the dangerous drugs, most likely amphetamines, that she has been prescribed.

Mother and son, it seems, have started down similar paths. Harry is a good-looking but aimless young man who thinks he’s going to hit it big peddling drugs with his pal Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and his new girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly). But they’re also users, which enhances Harry and Marion’s rush as they fall in love. When Tyrone and Harry score some high-grade stuff, Tyrone persuades a dubious Harry--they’re already getting high a lot--that they should have “just a little taste, to know how well it’s cut. It’s business.”

Aronofsky, who made a knockout debut with the virtuoso “Pi,” draws upon grammar of the experimental film--extreme close-ups, strobe cuts, split screen, rapid crosscutting, fast-forwards--to link the remorseless parallel downward spirals of mother and son, and the son’s lover and friend. For them, euphoria has been the cruelest, most destructive of illusions, prompted by that aching longing to get back to that moment of joy that we have lost--or to get hold of a happiness we never had.

Sara’s dream is so humble--to be able to wear that red dress again for her eagerly anticipated appearance on “national television.” And here’s Harry the drifter, experiencing an overwhelming first love with a young woman who’s been discarded by her wealthy family, left just enough money to allow Harry and Tyrone to have initial success in dealing drugs.

At this late date, it’s not easy to work up sympathy for drug addicts, but Aronofsky, in drawing from a writer as pure, raw and steadfast as Selby, thrusts us right into the psyches of these people. They have been brought to vivid, aching life by his cast, especially Burstyn, whose transformation from pleasant-looking matron to crazed, terrified wraith comes from deep within herself, way beneath all the surface tricks of makeup and movie wizardry that Aronofsky has at his disposal.

Indeed, “Requiem for a Dream” does get harder and harder to take as these four continue their downward paths with escalating swiftness. But Aronofsky is so compelling, so visionary a filmmaker, he keeps us riveted to his film as tightly as Sara is to her TV set.

There’s no easy way out for these sad cases, so betrayed by their most human longings. But “Requiem for a Dream,” superbly designed and photographed, by James Chinlund and Matthew Libatique, respectively, is a work of art whose beauty has the eternal power of redemption.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: graphic depictions of the extremes of drug addiction, some sex, language, adult themes and situations. Not for the squeamish--or anyone under 17.

‘Requiem for a Dream’

Ellen Burstyn: Sara Goldfarb

Jared Leto: Harry Goldfarb

Jennifer Connelly: Marion Silver

Marlon Wayans: Tyrone C. Love

Christopher McDonald: Tappy Tibbons

Louise Lasser: Ada

An Artisan Entertainment & Thousand Words presentation. Director Darren Aronofsky. Producers Eric Watson, Palmer West. Executive producers Nick Wechsler, Beau Flynn, Stefan Simchowitz. Screenplay by Hubert Selby Jr. and Darren Aronofsky; based on the novel by Selby. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique. Editor Jay Rabinowitz. Music Clint Mansell. String quartets performed by the Kronos Quartet. Visual effects designers and supervisors Jeremy Dawson & Dan Schrecker. Special makeup and prosthetic effects by Vincent J. Guastini. Costumes Laure Jean Shannon. Production designer James Chinlund. Art director Judy Rhee. Set decorator Ondine Karady. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

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