REQUIEM FOR A DREAM

Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Starring Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connolly, Marlon Wayans

In this line of work, you invariably see quite a lot of movies: approximately one hundred of them each year. Most of them, even the good ones, are so inherently unremarkable that you find yourself hard-pressed to remember jack-shit about any of them once the credits have rolled: if you're lucky, you might see four or five in a year that will stay with you.

Requiem for a Dream doesn't stay with you so much as burn a giant black hole in your consciousness, keeping you awake at night, following you everywhere you go, marking you for life. It's arguably the most remarkable and original film in living memory, and to say it has polarised reactions would be a massive understatement.

The second feature from hugely-talented Darren Aronofsky (*), Requiem is adapted from a novel by legendary junkie author Hubert Selby Jr., probably best known for his Last Exit to Brooklyn. The latter was brought to silver-screen life in 1989 and attracted serious contoversy at the time for its no-holds-barred intensity and brutality: but set next to this, Brooklyn quite literally looks like Bambi. An unbearably savage tale of addiction, madness and wasted love, it puts every other 'drug movie' ever made to waste by violently dragging the viewer down to the circle of hell Dante never quite made it to. The director's observation that 'it's definitely a trip into some sub-sub-basement of Hell' is, if anything, putting it mildly.

Holding nothing back at all, Requiem unleashes a vicious sensory bombardment on the viewer with an avalanche of extreme close-ups, split-second flashes and unsettling jump-cuts: most films contain about 700 edits, this one has 2000. The screening we attended prompted countless walk-outs and two faintings, and if you're in any way squeamish or vulnerable to 'disturbing' material, you are probably well-advised to steer miles clear of it.

For all its horror, Requiem for a Dream is genuinely a love story with more real humanity on display than a thousand Titanics. Good-natured dreamer Harry (Leto) and his sweet girlfriend Marion (Connelly) are madly in love as the film commences, making great plans for the future and financing their lifestyle by small-scale heroin dealing: they occasionally chase a bit or shoot up for the buzz, but have no intention of getting hooked. At any rate, they seem so in love they're invulnerable.

In a parallel narrative, Harry's lonely, widowed mother Sara (Burstyn) lives an isolated life in front of her television set, bingeing on chocolates and watching mind-numbing game shows. A phone call informs her that she may be asked to appear on her favourite show, and she starts fretting about her weight: this drives her to start on a regime of diet pills and coffee, with results that go beyond the catastrophic.

All is more than well in Harry and Marion's lives, until - imperceptibly - they arrive at a stage where they can afford to use as much gear as they like, then graduate to a point where no amount is quite enough. While their habits subtly spiral, Sara is slowly retreating from reality in her haunted apartment, succumbing to a horrible vicious circle of diet-pills (i.e. speed) and valium which renders her appearance more terrifying by the minute, even though the weight-loss has certainly been achieved.

The film's second half enters territory deeper and darker than words could hope to convey, and gradually assumes the status of a horror movie. The disquiet is heightened by an extremely unpleasant and effective soundtrack, largely consisting of crazed, fragmented industrial cut-up noise. By the final scene, a nightmarish crescendo of vicious violins is pumping out at full-blast over a practically unwatchable three-way cross-cut which involves the amputation of a gangrenous arm, a horrifically degrading sex-party scene and a spot of primordially savage electro-convulsive therapy. Easy viewing, this most certainly ain't.

Leto and Connelly completely push themselves to the edge in performances of breathtaking authenticity (Leto lost two stone and gave up sex with Cameron Diaz during the filming) - but the star of the show, beyond doubt, is Burstyn, boldly going where no actor before has quite dared to venture. Eaten alive by pure, raw, all-consuming terror, her character - though sympathetic throughout - must stand alone as the single spookiest creation in cinematic history.

There's absolutely no redemption here at all, no safe haven, no tidy ending, no light, no hope - Requiem For a Dream captures the complete mental and physical breakdown that accompanies addiction, with such accuracy that there simply isn't any point whatsoever in any film-maker addressing the subject again. It's been done. The definitive drug-hell movie to end them all.

Stunning.

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