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Requiem For A Dream on DVD (2000)

Requiem For A Dream cover art
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Average rating: 75%
1112381220713
3.5
from 4,908 members
 
Starring: Jared Leto, Ellen Burstyn, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Louise Lasser, Christopher McDonald, Sean Gullette, Keith David
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Studio: MOMENTUM PICTURES
Run time: 97 mins
Certificate: 18
User collections: IMHO best movies I have seen, my dvd collection, Films that Dont require a thousand explosions, lotioninthebasket, Just a few of me favourite films..., Shocking climaxes, Alternative genius, My top 10 films ever, Fun films for fun people, Film fanatics fave films
Genres: Drama
Languages: English
Subtitles: English
Released: 06/08/2001
Also Available on:  Also Available on: DIGITAL

Brief synopsis of Requiem For A Dream

For his follow-up to his darkly brilliant debut, PI, director Darren Aronofsky chose to adapt a tough and meaty piece of work: Hubert Selby's 1968 novel REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. However, in Aronofsky's frenetic, visionary, unique, and disturbing style lies the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. This is a different sort of horror film. Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto) and Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) are lovers in Brooklyn with dreams of setting up a small business and spending the rest of their lives in love--their version of the American dream. The two are also desperate heroin addicts, a compulsion that darkens their lives and leads Harry to repeatedly pawn his mother's television. His mother, Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), is addicted to television, which is why she keeps replacing the stolen set. One day she receives a call from her favorite show, the surreal TAPPY TIBBONS SHOW, and learns that she has been selected to appear on an upcoming broadcast. When she can't fit into her best red dress, her doctor prescribes diet pills (uppers), to which she swiftly and painfully becomes addicted. Harry's cohort, an intelligent hustler named Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), completes the foursome. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made.

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Critics Reviews

Rating of 4 stars out of 5 Radio Times

The creeping menace of addiction — in all its forms — is the subject of Darren Aronofsky's powerful adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr's novel. Junk TV shows, diet pills and Class A drugs are the lifeblood of these doomed characters. Ellen Burstyn is the widowed mother hooked on game shows and sweet foods, whose desperate bid to lose weight leads to hallucinations and increased loneliness. Her heroin addict son (Jared Leto) and his friend (Marlon Wayans) pawn the TV for drugs money, while Leto's girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) degrades herself at stag parties. Making stylish use of the split-screen technique, huge close-ups and exaggerated sound effects, Aronofsky depicts the highs and lows of drug-taking — to chilling effect. Like Trainspotting and Drugstore Cowboy before it, this is a powerful and unnerving trip into the narcotics dependent darkness of modern America.

Total Film

"...Both the direction and performances are Oscar-deservingly outstanding....REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is so devastating that it resonates like the echo of a dying scream..." -- 4 out of 5 stars

Chicago Sun

"...Fascinating....Aronofsky brings a new urgency to the drug movie by trying to reproduce, through his subjective camera, how his characters feel, or want to feel, or fear to feel..."

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Members Reviews

Reviews Voted Most Helpful

Rated - 5 starsA Cinematic Addiction

Chris Wilkins from Winchester, England , 10/02/2004

Harrowing, brutal and gut wrenching, 'Requiem' is one film that reverses, spins and spits out the normally passive senses and emotions that one receives with a film watching. The audience is jerked into sitting up straight with the visceral editing, the subtle and jarring score and haunted performances of the cast. Discursive, intrusive, and abrasive, a truely individual and affecting piece of cinema.

  47 out of 57 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsPyschological Warning!

MattBurn from Notts , 12/10/2004

This is my favourite film of all time. A truly excellent film should touch you, make a difference to your day, and have a long lasting effect on you. The incredible impact of Requiem does not lessen with each viewing, each and every time it is an emotional rollercoaster, with SO many 'heart in your mouth' moments! You'll smile with contentment, jump with fear, cry in dismay, and go pure crazy with shock! I've never shown this film to anyone who did not sit there in disbelief and amazement after it's intensely traumatic ending.

When I first viewed it, the guy behind the counter said, 'Are You Sure? This film will mess you up, I guarantee it!', and I protested, saying 'No film is THAT messed up!'

This one is. I promise you.

The cinematography is incredible; adapted from a near perfect book by Hubert Selby Jr. (which I highly recommend), the hugely entertaining and captivating story is perfectly translated to screen by Aronovsky et al.

The film lulls you into a false sense of security, makes you think everything is going to be ok. You enjoy the interesting hip-hop montage camera shots, and have a few giggles. Then it slowly but surely smacks you around the face with an iron bar, until you are black, blue and maybe even a nice sickly green. It's a build up of emotional, visual and audio assaults on the viewer, and you cannot get away from it.

Not that you'll want to.

Watch this film now! But be warned.

  39 out of 43 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 3 starsRequiem for a mush heed

A customer from Sunderland , 03/07/2005

This film made me want to take an overdose. it was brilliant, I hated it.

  39 out of 49 people found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 stars21st century anti-drugs movie

Imran from London , 10/06/2004

If you want to warn anyone about the dangers of hard drugs show them this film! It is one of the most intense films I have ever seen, I can't say I enjoyed it but it certainly was mightily impressive watching it build to a crescendo of pain and suffering. A modern day classic.

  32 out of 37 people found this review helpful
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Most Recent Reviews

Rated - 1 starsPretentious dirge

Robert Dawson from Cardiff,Wales [Highly rated reviewer] , 17/02/2008

One of those films that you'll either love or hate.....see my one star rating above...guess how i felt about it?

  1 out of 1 person found this review helpful
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Rated - 5 starsA Cinematic Addiction

Chris Wilkins from Winchester, England , 10/02/2004

Harrowing, brutal and gut wrenching, 'Requiem' is one film that reverses, spins and spits out the normally passive senses and emotions that one receives with a film watching. The audience is jerked into sitting up straight with the visceral editing, the subtle and jarring score and haunted performances of the cast. Discursive, intrusive, and abrasive, a truely individual and affecting piece of cinema.

  47 out of 57 people found this review helpful
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