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At The Movies

Dream Weaver

Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for a Dream"
plunges four characters into delusion and desperation.

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he first few moments of
Darren Aronofsky's
Requiem for a Dream are
gritty, disorienting
and bold. Beginning with a
clever split-screen image,
Requiem introduces the par-
allelism of its interconnected sto-
ries with the precision and intellectual
rigor of a Bach counterpoint.
The intersecting stories are primarily
those of Harry Goldfarb Oared Leto)
and his widowed mother Sara (Ellen
Burstyn). Based on a 1978 novel of the
same name by Hubert Selby Jr. (Last

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begins to take diet pills, prescribed by
the socially acceptable drug dealer: the
physician. The comparison between the
underworld drug culture and the over-
the-counter drug culture might seem a
heavy-handed observation, but
Aronofsky makes this parallel devel-
opment work by injecting it
with dark grace and humor.
On several levels, the film is
painful to watch. But director
Aronofsky takes the needle-in-the-arm,
junkie-culture idiom to new heights by
making it beautiful as well as frighten-
ing. Even as Harry plunges into the
depths of his depraved drug-dealer
world and Sara falls prey to diet pills
that transform her dreams into frenetic
hallucinations, Aronofsky refuses to
give us a simple picture of frail human-
ity in this theater of the absurd.
We could so easily despise these

traces the predictable descent of several
characters into a quicksand of agoniz-
ing addiction from which they are bare-
ly motivated to escape.
With achingly beautiful story-
telling and mesmerizing film-
making, Aronofsky doesn't have
to give us an original plot to
keep us hooked. His character
studies are riveting in all their
grisly intimacy, and the perform-
ances are worth all the discom-
fort the faint-of-heart might feel..
The theme that links all of the
characters in the film is that their
dreams collide with their realities.
Ellen Burs t yn (Sara Goldfarb) is directed by Darrei
Harry and his friend Tyrone
Aronofiky on the set of "Requiem for a Dream."
(Marlon Wayans) plan drug-deal-
ing schemes with joy and earnest-
characters, but we do not. Instead,
ness. Harry wants to get money so that
Aronofsky
offers a rich vision of com-
he can finance the entrepreneurial
plicated interactions between people,
dreams of his clothes-designing girl-
drugs and dependency. It's not a
friend, Marion Silver (Jennifer
pleasant vision, but it's a cathartic one.
Connelly). Doubly dependent, Marion
Aronofsky — who made his directori-
relies increasingly upon Harry's ability to
al debut with the film TE, a surreal
procure drugs. As both their addictions
adventure in the world of Kabbala and
grow, Marion, herself a flawed heroine
computers — once again deals with a
on heroin, gets desperately caught up in
Jewish
subject. But in Requiem for a
a lurid version of junkie glamour.
Dream, the Jewishness is all but
Mama Goldfarb is an addict of
expunged from the film. A mention of
another sort: she watches TV constant-
pastrami-on-rye by Sara hints at the cul-
ly, tuned into a cult-like, self-improve-
tural background of the Goldfarbs, but
ment infomercial that sucks her in.
it seems their Jewishness is only a super-
After being contacted by a contestant
ficial characterization meant to give an
search, Sara, too, becomes ensnared by
ethnic flavor to this Brooklyn saga. 0
her own misguided version of glamour.
She longs to shed excess pounds to fit
Requiem for a Dream, rated R,
into a red dress that symbolizes for her
opens today at the Main Art
a moment of perfect happiness.
Theatre in Royal Oak.
Egged on by her clique of lady-friends
— and looking for acceptance — she