Film Studies - Requiem For A Dream [W2 Movie Review]

"Requiem For A Dream" is a psychological type film directed by Darren Aronofsky, starring Ellen Burstyn as Sara Goldfarb, Jared Leto as Harry Goldfarb, Jennifer Connelly as Marion Silver, and Marlon Wayans as Tyrone C. Love. This movie has convey the message as the effect of drug addicts to its audience.

The movie starts in a place in Brooklyn admist the waning Coey Island, a place where drugs are easily to get, similar as going to the nearest supermarket to buy groceries. As having same goals to open up own business, Harry and Tyrone has spot a chance to earn big money by becoming drug dealer. Harry's mother, Sara Goldfarb got hook up with diet pills after receive a call, mention that she was chose to be on stage in her favourite TV show, but until the end of the movie she only see hallucination about she have attend the show. Marion Silver, has a positive identity to her parent but actually is drug addicted like Harry Goldfarb.

As a short summary, four individuals, hook up with drug addicts, and finally lead to failures as the end of their life.

Harry act as a disobedient son. In this movie he is more caring to his girlfriend, Marion Silver compare to his biological mother, Sara Goldfarb. As an example, Harry mortgage the only valuable property and his mothers favourite in the house, television to a pawnshop with his friend, Tyrone to get fast money to have fun with Marion.

Sara, a widow, truly obsessed with TV. She decide to have diet plan after receive a call from anonymous. She does not have evidence that she will really be on the stage, but she believe it because the caller have claim that he is from the television show, JUICE. Due to this call, Sara has ruined her ordinary lifestyle by her own hand.

In this movie, Aronofsky did a well play of using camera angle and technique. One of the camera technique, fisheye shot is use with timelapse. The purpose of fisheye shot is used for showing whole place where and what the character doing. It can also make the audience feel stronger intense like something is going to happen on next.

Moreover, instead showing the action of  getting drug addict with long shot technique, Aronofsky focused on spirit world of the character than with extreme close-up shot. As an example, Aronofsky used this technique when Sara see horrifying hallucination after overtake the dosage of diet pill to speed up weight loss. This give a strong impact to audience like they are immersed themselves into the character and experiencing the character life.

The director has take advantage of lightning to create atmosphere match to its situation. As an example, dim light is used when Marion doing filthy deal with her pimp, Big Tim, to fulfill her drug addiction without care the price she will need to pay for. Apart from this, the movie have a great soundtrack composed by Clint Mansell and performed by Kronos Quartet. It brings out the

After the movie, I was expected that Sara will persuade Harry to stop taking drugs, but was not expected that she will follow her desire and get hooked up with diet pills.

In my opinion, The split screen has perfectly show the perspective view of the character, but honestly I does not really like this technique because it make me feel dizzy after continuous showing split screen. Other than that, I learn that desire can sometimes make one blinded. The movie has show that drug is truly horrible and harmful, if a person has hooked up with it, it become hard to escape from the addicts.