Requiem for a Dream

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Summary: A Dark, Sobering Whirlwind of a Book
Review: Let me say this up front - Requiem is very, very dark - the setting, the characters, and the message of the book are pretty bleak and hopeless. So why should you read it? First, the characters - Selby has drawn each of the four participants in this race to hell with stunning precision - after reading the book (and seeing the largely faithful movie) you feel as if you honestly know these people. Second, the terrifyingly accurate portrait of the downward spiral of addiction. Each of these characters reacts differently to his/her being hooked, but, with the exception of Sara, the brutal truth finally becomes too evident to ignore, at least until the next "little taste". The isolation of the addict is brilliantly rendered as Sara declines to go out, Tyrone gladly says goodbye to his "fine fox", and Harry and Marion lose the intensity of their love for each other to their more urgent love of heroin. Finally, it is Selby's gifts as a storyteller that provide the main reason for this book's classic status - I have read "stream of consciousness" before, but never have I been so riveted by it. The final 50 pages or so just go by in a horrible blur. Don't expect a light at the end of the tunnel - Selby doesn't celebrate dreamers, he condemns them for obscuring their view of what is with delusions of what could be. Powerful stuff.

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Summary: Aronofsky's Audacious Adaptation
Review: Brilliant screenplay adaptation of Hubert Selby's gutwrenchingly beautiful novel "Requiem for a Dream" by writer/director Darren Aronofsky (Pi). Requeim is a story of four lost souls, all addicted to their own twisted version of the American Dream, whether in the form of heroin, television, or wealth and of their inevitable downfalls. Despite infuriating misconception, Requiem is not a "drug" film (or novel). The drug addiction, while portrayed starkly and powerfully, is not the point of the story. It is, instead, the obsession with material goods and the persual of false happiness that novelist Selby and screenwriter Aronofsky are concerned with. Aronofsky takes a seemingly unfilmable novel, full of long, disconnected interior monologues and turns it into a ferociously visceral descent into hell, all the while remaining faithful to the source material, as well as retaining it's haunted, subtle soul. Indeed, the most powerful scene in the frantic, intense screenplay is the quietest, when junkie Harry Goldfarb (stunningly realized in the film by erstwhile no talent Jared Leto) pays a visit to his television obsessed mother, Sara, (Ellen Burstyn in the performance of the year) and discovers, in a brilliantly written monologue, the true depths of her lonliness. It's the sole moment of connection in a work filled with isolation and despair. For all its darkness, however, it's a testament to Aronofsky that the screenplay (and the film) are never intolerable, at least not unintentionally so, and are even filled with an adrenaline rush of sorts, albeit a dark one. An amazing and accomplished work (from a classic novel), by a filmmaker destined to become one of the greats. Recommended for fans of the novel as well as the film, or just anyone interested in great screenwriting. (If you haven't yet read the novel, however, I suggest you start with that first).