Requiem for a dream

One of the most gritty any powerful movies I have ever watched. For anyone with an addiction, this film really highlights the bitter truths of what can come about due to addiction. This film isn’t a horror, but it sure is scary. Scary because it is believable.
The film follows four main characters all linked together either through friendship, love or family. The two main characters are Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and his mother Sara (Ellen Burstyn). All are addicted to something, either drugs, such as heroin, or in the more tragic case of the mother, television.
All the main characters experience delusion and desperation at some point in the film, but Sara’s experiences are perhaps the most tragic. Sara, an elderly widow, is stuck at home all day, watching infomercials.
One day she receives a phone call from a television studio, saying that she has won the chance to appear on the show. After which her life takes on a new purpose: to fit into the red dress which she wore to her son’s graduation, one of her proudest moments.
Trying new diets, which fail, she visits a doctor recommended to her by one of her friends, who inexplicably prescribes her amphetamines in order to lose weight, which she becomes addicted to. The pills give her a bit of pep, which her son notices and then begs her to stop using them. After a while, the high she gets from the pills wears off, so she takes more and more, with devastating effects.
She visits the doctor once again, who gives her a prescription of valium. She begins having hallucinations of herself on the TV show, or of the refrigerator moving violently.
Meanwhile, Harry and his friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) start to deal drugs and Harry envisions opening a shop with the money to sell clothes designed by his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly), who is also a drug addict.
Inevitably, their fortunes take a turn for the worst, when their main source of drugs is murdered by a rival gang. Tyrone gets arrested and Harry spends most of the savings bailing him out of jail. Harry’s arm is also beginning to show signs of infection. After this his relationship with his girlfriend starts to deteriorate, which results in Harry persuading Marion to have sex with a former therapist for drugs money.
Meanwhile, Sara is still waiting for her information to be on the television show, and as a result her condition worsens, due to the pills. Sara ends up travelling, in a rather fragile state, to the television studio, in order to find out what has been going on.
During the winter months, Harry and Tyrone drive to Florida, believing there to be a wider source of drugs available, Harry’s arm is now severely infected, but ignoring this, he injects directly into the wound, causing his condition to worsen dramatically. Tyrone is forced to drive them to the hospital, where the doctor immediately spots them as drug addicts and reports them to the police without giving Harry and treatment.
Marion, now suffering from drugs withdrawal, visits “Big Tim”, a pimp, who she knows will give her heroin in return for sexual favours. Afterwards he mentions that there will be a party coming up that she should attend if she would like more. Marion declines Big Tim’s offer at first, but when her drugs run out she attends the party.
The film then climaxes with all the characters reaching their fate, which is one of broken dreams and failed lives. Harry is in hospital, with his arm amputated after the infection, Sara, now in a mental hospital after receiving painful and useless electrical therapy, completely detached from reality. Marion attends the party where she has to perform sexual acts with another woman for drunk and aggressive businessmen; she receives drugs in return for her ‘work’. Tyrone is now in prison where he is suffering from withdrawal symptoms as well as from the hard labour forced on him by the racist prison guards.
The movie ends with all four of the main characters lying in a foetal position.
The film is ultimately about loss, as all characters lose something along the way. Sara looses her mind, Marion looses her dignity, Tyrone looses his freedom and Harry looses his arm. Also, the relationships are broken between the characters, meaning that everyone has lost someone dear to them, mainly Harry, who looses his mother, his girlfriend and his best friend. At the end of the film he is crying out for his girlfriend Marion, the nurse says that she will be sent for, but deep down he knows that she will not come.
The director, Darren Aronofsky, stresses in the movie’s commentary, that by choosing to escape reality with denial and delusion, the characters are only destroying themselves further. They all long to be closer to one another, but by choosing the paths they do, they are only driven further away from those they love.
One thing that really stands out in this film is its incredible soundtrack, which was composed by Clint Mansell and performed by the Kronos quartet. The music has now been widely used, including being used in the film trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.
The style of the movie features many cuts, as was in the Aronofsky’s previous film π. An average 100 minute film has around 1000 cuts, whereas Requiem for a Dream has over 2000. This creates a fast moving tempo, especially towards the end of the film, when the final outcomes of the characters are about to be revealed and the focus is switched between characters.
Do not expect this to be a film that is there to be enjoyed. It is definitely a powerful piece of work, which I would recommend anyone to see, but entertainment it is not.
It is sometimes a very hard to watch movie, with some very disturbing scenes and some heartbreaking moments, especially watching the tragic story of Sara, and seeing what she is reduced to by the end of the movie.
Don’t be surprised if you are left with an empty feeling once the credits start to roll, as the shocking, desperate and above all believable lives you have just watched are far from being ones which you don’t care about.
Requiem for a Dream is something which I would give a very positive rating to, but it is something which I don’t expect to be watching time and time again. This is because of the power of the movie though and the effect it can have on the viewer, rather than it being a bad movie. This is a movie which people will still be talking about many years from now.

28 Weeks Later - Plot

28 Weeks Later follows on from the 2002 film 28 days later directed by Danny Boyle. This time the director is Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, but the action and story is no less intense.
The film rejoins the story 28 weeks after the original rage virus had tore through Britain devastating the population. At the end of that film we find out that Britain had been put under quarantine and that the rest of the world had been living on as normal.
The movie starts with Don, played by Robert Carlyle, in a safe house with a group of other people, including his wife. After hearing a young boy at the door, he foolishly lets him in and the infected tear through the house and quickly overwhelm those inside. Don sees his wife Alice get bitten by one of the infected and decides to leave her behind, knowing that the virus will soon overcome her and she will become infected. He is the only one to escape the house and gets away on a small boat.
We then find out that 7 months later, at the Isle of Dogs, in London, that American soldiers are planning on re-introducing people to Britain in order to re-populate the country as they believe that it is now safe and that the infected have died out. Don is re-united with his son and daughter and has to explain to them how he had to leave her behind when he escaped.
An American medical officer, Scarlett Ross, is angry to find out that the children have been let into the country, believing that it is still too soon for such young people to be around. The children quickly decide that they will escape the secure area and visit their old house. Once there, they discover their mother, still alive and apparently uninfected. Once back at the secure area, tests are done on the Alice and it is found out that she is actually carrying the virus, but her body is immune to it and it can have no effect. Scarlett believes that she and the children could be the key to figuring out the virus.
Once Don and his wife are re-united, they share a kiss and Don quickly becomes infected and proceeds to kill his wife and wreak havoc around the area.
Once the Americans find out that there is an infected person spreading the virus, they order that every person seen with the virus to be killed, but the virus spreads too quickly and they order an extermination of everyone in the area, infected or not, so no chances are taken.
Scarlett tries to escape, along with the children, believing them to be the only way to understand the virus, and one of the soldiers who disagrees with the way the outbreak has been handled. The soldiers are told to regroup at a nearby football stadium in order to evacuate the country. Scarlett and the children make it and manage to escape, but only after one of the children has been bitten. However he shows no signs of infection and seems to have inherited the immunity that his mother has to the virus.
The movie then cuts to 28 days later, and chaos in the streets of Paris, as groups of infected people run through the streets.