Why Requiem for Dreams is still very divisive and 25 years after its release

Darren Aronofsky’s radical drug addiction drama was highly praised and angry when it was announced in 2000.

Dream Requiem, which debuted 25 years ago in May 2000, elicited both a rave review and a controversial fire. The midnight screening at the Cannes Film Festival led to a enthusiastic standing ovation from the auditorium’s 3,000 audience. When author Hubert Selby Jr. (who wrote the film’s based 1978 novel Hubert Selby Jr. came out, tears plunged down his face. Critical praise continued along with Peter Bradshaw of Guardian Rhapsody That director, Darren Aronofsky, reached Orson Wells’ legendary heights with “learning energy, consistency and perfect technique.”

However, at the Toronto Film Festival, where there are some audiences, the reception was played very differently. vomiting Disgust. The film, which is plagued by the NC-17 rating, won a lean $7.5 million (£5.5 million) budget on a $4.5 million (£3.3 million) budget, fell to several detractors, as it had placed in the Boston Globe.

The critical response was how Dream Requiem portrayed a drug addict. In other words, it’s a bittersweet detail, coming closer. The film follows widow Sarah Goldfarb (Ellen Burston) and becomes obsessed with diet pills to become a contestant on a video game show. Meanwhile, his son Harry (Jared Leto) and his best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) hatch their plans to get rich sales heroin. As things go south, they pressure Harry’s girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connery) to trade drugs. The plot swirls like a vortex that draws them to a horrific fate: torture treatment of electroconvulsive shock therapy, amputation of the arms of breaking gangs, conscription into prison gangs by racist security guards, exploitation of humiliating sex jobs.

Filmmakers set out to provide sensory gunfire that mimics the addiction experience. But they ultimately did more, touching on the serious debate about the free will of the addict, the line between compassionate observation and exploitative voyeurism, and the toxic siren call of the American dream itself. Twenty-five years later, these debates are still smoldering.

The idea for this film came when producer Eric Watson noticed a copy of Selby’s novel sitting on Aronofsky’s bookshelf in 1998. “I asked him if I could rent it to read anything on a ski trip with my parents, which completely ruined my holiday.

Aronofsky and Watson sent the script to all major studios. response? “Cricket,” recalls Watson. “No one even bothered to call us back.” Not denied, they secured half of the necessary funds from artisan entertainment and rode independent producer Palmer West to help raise a budget with the rest of their shoes. The casting process also proved challenging. “Tobey Maguire, Adrien Brody, Joaquin Phoenix, Giovanni Ribisi – they all showed up at auditions to explore the project or become Harry, but they turned down the part,” recalls Watson. “It was just too many career risks.”

Once Leto, Connelly, Wayan and Burstin were cast, the actors strived for credibility. Leto stripped off 25 pounds (11kg) and spent time with a homeless heroin addict in New York’s East Village. Wayans roamed the shirtless frozen streets of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in February. When filming began, Burstyn wore a 40 pound (18kg) fat suit in the first scene, swapping for a 20 pound (9kg) suit, and finally took two weeks off, losing 10 pounds (4.5kg) on ​​a strict cabbage soup diet, simulating the character’s unhealthy weight loss.

Inspired by a tracking shot from Spike Lee’s right thing, Aronofsky used Snorricam shots (camera equipped on the actor’s body) to convey the dissolution of external reality. To this he added split screen, acceleration, deceleration, fade to white, and all tools to mimic the sensory distortion induced by title cards, camera spirals, fisheye lenses, extreme long shots, pixelation, and surrealist Miesen Skeine – opioids. (The evidence that these techniques made an impression came when the Simpsons featured the unmistakable ones respect. )

But even if these visual effects gained enthusiasm, the film’s views on drug addiction sparked controversy. Meanwhile, Trainspotting (1996) was troubled by pillars glory Requiem for Dreams, a cultural aesthetic of “heroin chic,” was seen as offering a constant, dark portrait of material use. The image of “spiral” becomes the standard phors of critics, explaining the meaning that when an addict gets caught, he is dragged into a horrifying purpose with almost mercy.

“It’s very accurate how you portray the trajectory of heroin addiction. I’m sad to say,” says David J.Nat, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London. “Most people start using it out of despair or despair, but a considerable number like Harry and Tyrone see drug dealing as an entrepreneurial venture, as a way to quickly make money and continue life. But it’s rarely over.”

Meanwhile, Professor Natt believes that Sarah Goldfarb represents a generation of housewives in the 1950s and 1960s “who were casually prescribed amphetamines without proper supervision from a doctor.” Regarding Marion’s fate, he says today, “pimps continue to control and abuse women by exploiting addiction.”

But the heart of what the film is right is that it adds Professor Nat to dramatically addiction as a chemistry disorder in the brain that induces obsessive-compulsive behavior. “Unless you know the attractive impulse, you don’t rely on reusing the extremely painful jet sites,” he says.

Not all addiction experts agree. Gene Hayman, a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston University, told the BBC that Requiem for Dreams brilliantly portrays the euphoria of drug initiation, followed by the worsening of painful withdrawals. But that’s where the accuracy ends.

“The film tells a familiar story: a downward trajectory that has been once an addict, always an addict, and inevitably no one recovers,” says Heyman. “And that’s just a mistake. All epidemiological data shows that by the age of 30, most heavy drug users are no longer in use – they stop using it and don’t start again – and they don’t do it without treatment or specialized intervention. And that’s the data, not my opinion.

Watson was angry at Fielding’s question about the accuracy of Requiem’s ​​addiction for dreams. “Hubert Selby was very active in AA and NA [Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous]however, our film wasn’t meant to double as a documentary or a pamphlet to the road,” he says. “No, that’s not realistic. It’s surreal. Get calm.”

Selby himself always asserted that one manifestation of the fascinating power of American dreams and that he viewed drug addiction as mere manifestation, as what he regarded as its toxic effect. Prior to the release of the film, he wrote a new preface to his novel. It said, “Obviously, pursuing the American dream is not only futile, but ultimately destroying everything and destroying everyone involved.”

Many critics began to see the Requiem for Dreams with the Great Gatsby (1925) in the same vein An innovative path (1961), a work that exposes the dark belly of American mythology. Kevin Haggopian, a professor of media studies at Penn State University, said the film, featuring junk television and junk food, is based specifically on the American addiction environment.

“Studio games show everything about Sarah producing a fake pleasure that was jacked up with anxiety,” he says. “Here we know the shortcut to unrealistic grasp after the unrealistic Panacea, quick fixes, so we don’t need to think about our purpose in life. Here, American dreams are not something we need to pursue, they are the ultimate villain.

Now, Financial Times film critic Danny Leigh praised Leciem in a Sound and Sound Magazine when it was first released. “I was undoubtedly a stylish film production, and was wiped out by the brio of that live film,” Lee tells the BBC. “Trainspotting was a seismic cultural event and touched on the dizzy Britpop moments, so we thought Requiem was a powerful corrective.

Meanwhile, however, Lee is unsure about Aronofsky’s work. “As if he penetrated the emotionally hopeless situation and brought unpleasant condescending to the tragic situation, I felt there was a tension in his filmmaking of choice.” Lee says that this impulse reached the most grotesque limbs of Aronofsky’s Whale (2022).

In contrast, Hagopians feel that Aronofsky shows a true curiosity to understand those who have been avoided by the margins of society. “Many experimental films create what I call a nightmare of psychic distance,” he says. “Think of it that we need to talk about David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986), or Michael Haneke’s Piano Teacher (2001), or Lynn Ramsay’s Kevin (2011). He says Requiem for Dreams takes the opposite approach by achieving what he calls a “nightmare of spiritual intimacy.”

“We are so forced close to the characters that their pain and trauma appears to leach into our own consciousness. It can even feel claustrophobic as invasive. But for me, it’s a brave kind of filmmaking.

Requiem for a Dream can be viewed in the UK on Peacock, Prime Video, Apple TV+ US and Sky Store, Prime Video and Apple TV+