BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Requiem for a Snooze

  
 
deja_vroom
13:25 / 28.08.02
Because the old thread is not working anymore...

I watched it yesterday and I thought it was OK even though it lacked the necessary subtleness certain scenes need to prevent them from getting just plain silly (pies and cakes falling down from the ceiling, Marion imagining she's stabbing the Dork's hand with a fork, Harry shooting heroin in his infected arm when he had several square feet of clean skin and veins at his disposal, just to be, you know, extreme, a walking refrigerator which was supposed to be scary but is just camp and manages to ridicule the experience of suffering from drug-induced hallucinnation).

Oh, look, the *normal* guy, the one who has a job and whose life's on the tracks also happens to be totally uncool and disgusting, the type of person who pays for sex, ew. Just to say that this is not an *awful flick*, but it does has enough insulting moments to make me wonder why it wasn't indicated for the Oscars...

On the other hand, Ellen Burstyn, when not being overwhelmed by all the gimmickery going loose on the flick, is what makes the experience worth. When she tells her son about what is like getting old, *then* I got scared. Not double dildo ass sex scene can top that (and don't tell me Aranofsky didn't *try* to...)

Marion's character wasn't developed enough before she started the downward spiral so that we could care more about her. The only moments she is alone in the screen are there ones in which we can watch her suffer form abstinence. Before that she was only the standard bimbo. But who is she, anyway? It's like watching a beggar suffering in the street, it's awful, but we've seen it before. No catharsis cake this time, kiddos. Suffice to say this flick makes a great deal of a climax where we discover that *gasp* people exchange sex for money! And they're gonna use that money to (my god!) buy drugs! Oh, please.
Can't wait for his Batman, though... (just kidding!)
 
 
The Natural Way
14:50 / 28.08.02
The misery is so extreme in Requiem that, in the end, it just disappears into the background. The film's a mood - a bit like those old Orb videos, but w/ double assing and spikes in veins: ambient misery.
 
 
Kase Taishuu
15:47 / 28.08.02
it sucks.

cool art direction, great acting by Ellen Burstyn and all, but when it comes down to it, it's just one of those books about drugs 7th graders are forced to read made into a film. Apparently people have got so much used to hollywood pasteurized sentimentalism that anything with stronger scenes tastes like a masterpiece, even if it has nothing to say. As you pointed out, there is no catharsis after Marion, and the kid not only doing nothing about his arm but actually shooting there for no good reason makes me feel short-changed that he only loses an arm (I developed an antipathy for him when he discovers how deep his mother had gone already, but does nothing to help her. Instead, he just goes cry around, and then forgets about her and his very cute love for her depicted that far altogether. Oh well, nothing to complicate the plot, eh, and showing any resistance would go against the movie main thesis - that once you are into drugs you are just a choiceless automaton who will do nothing but annihilate yourself, preferrably by the stupidest way you can think of, just as you were told in 7th grade). Tyrone (is that his name?) doesn't even need to be mentioned - oh, the sore taste of failure, he told his mamma he would succeed and he didn't. Sara Goldfarb is the only character you actually feel anything for.

I don't think that the *normal* guy, the one who has a job and whose life's on the tracks who also happens to be totally uncool and disgusting, the type of person who pays for sex is meant to be there for comparison or as an "alternative" to the path the main characters are leading, tho - he is just an artifice to make Marion suffer, and that one may go any further into him is probably an accident not envisioned by the director than anything else. Requiem for a Dream lacks the maturity of Trainspotting, in which a regular, law-abiding life is portrayed as meaningless as self-destruction through drugs - but the characters are given the choice between either. Also, arguing for subtleness in a flick whose success is largely due to its plain silly crudeness is somewhat idle. ^^
 
 
deja_vroom
16:15 / 28.08.02
*thread rot*
Kase, good to see you!
Which other threads you're visiting, so I can check them out?
 
 
Kase Taishuu
19:17 / 28.08.02
Oh, I just wander from forum to forum. Still getting used to the place, and no time to read the huge threads or write large replies . Also, I have an uncanny talent to threadkill. ^_^
 
 
deja_vroom
19:26 / 28.08.02
Think you can handle this, then?
 
 
videodrome
22:08 / 28.08.02
Glad to see I'm not the only one here who doesn't canonize this film. I thought it was crap as well, for all the reasons mentioned as well as the simple fact that, every time someone tries to act, Aronofsky (well Libateque, technically) starts shaking the fucking camera. Bugged the hell out of me. When else have you seen a Wayons act? Never, I tell you. And here he is, doing a good job and with that camera shaking all over the cell block, like it was Elvis or some damn thing.

Anyway.

Also agree that the doctor (actor chap from Pi) is just there as another tool of degradation. He's not a character - he's a cypher. "Look what heroin starved girls will do, children!" Bah. Hated the backwoods sheriff situation that probably played fine on paper in the 60's or 70's, but just runs like an anachronism with it's ass on fire now. "Hey, look at ME. Everything is BAD!" Again, bah.
 
 
Jackie Susann
00:41 / 29.08.02
I liked it, mainly because I don't think it has all that much to do with drugs, more uses drugs as a metaphor for failed communication and the ways people end up hurting the people they love. I think it works well on that level...
 
 
ill tonic
01:14 / 29.08.02
Old thread here.

This has been the only movie in a long time to actually break through my jaded exterior and bitch slap me stupid. It tramuatized me and for that fact alone,(not to mention the great score and excellent editing) I consider it a classic.

'Nuff said.
 
 
the Fool
01:27 / 29.08.02
Harry shooting heroin in his infected arm when he had several cubic feet of clean skin and veins at his disposal, just to be, you know, extreme

I think they were 'trying' to show someone who had basically used every vien, collapsed a couple and now the whole thing was festering. I knew someone in the same position. He used to shoot up in front of me, despite knowing how I felt about it and needles in general. His arm was a mess. He'd inject into barely healed holes. He couldn't use half of his viens because they had collapsed.

That scene nearly made me puke.
 
 
The Natural Way
09:24 / 29.08.02
Oh, BTW, I don't like the film much either.
 
 
deja_vroom
11:29 / 29.08.02
Re: Harry's arm:

Look at that scene. Look at that milky white skin of that bloke. Why didn't they at least prepared him to look like he had used all of his veins? Read The Naked Lunch for some first-person accounts on what addicted people do when they run out of veins to use and compare to the Dawson's Creek-like feelin of that movie...

"Oh man, don't tell me you gonna shoot in this arm!"
"Blow me if I'm not!"
"Ok, then".

In that other scene Harry says something to the effect of: "Yeah, my mom got tired of going every week to the tv shop to get her tv back". I couldn't believe this line!
See, kids, this is what drugs do to your life. They turn it into a third-rate sitcom without the safety net of the canned laughter.
 
 
tSuibhne
13:23 / 29.08.02
I thought it was pretty good. Course, after watching Pi I realized that Darren can't tell a decent story, so I wasn't expecting one.
 
 
Red Cross Iodized Salt
23:50 / 29.08.02
I liked the film, although it didn't affect me as much as I had been told it would. It looked good and Aronofsky certainly managed to capture the feel of Hubert Selby Jr., but I found it difficult to identify with the characters to the extent that their misery was truly distressing. The only character I found it at all easy to sympathize with was Sara. The others were just too selfish, self-serving and shallow.

I expect a lot of this comes from Selby. I haven't read Requiem for a Dream, but The Room, Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Demon create the impression that he really doesn't like people very much. He certainly doesn't treat any of the people he puts in his books as if he likes them.
 
 
The Tower Always Falls
18:59 / 01.09.02
I did like the film, but I agree that Aronofsky has a tendency to go "style over content" all too easily.

I will say this. I read an interview where Aronifsky tried plotting out each of the characters arcs and he saw they were upside-down. Everytime something good was supposed to happen to them, something bad did. Then he realized the humans aren't the real main characters in the film. The real "hero" of the film is addiction. It's a story of addiction valiantly triumphing over the human soul.

Say what you will. I find the movie fascinating just for (perhaps not completely successfully) trying to capture an emotion on film as a main character.
 
 
shirtless, beepers and suntans
21:34 / 02.09.02
i don't know about an emotion supposedly being the main character (sounds a little pretentious to me), but for a few glorious weeks after watching the film, my friends and i walked around saying "Go ass to ass!" almost non-stop.
 
 
videodrome
02:17 / 03.09.02
Addiction isn't an emotion.

my friends and i walked around saying "Go ass to ass!" almost non-stop.

And that's just disgusting.
 
 
diz
11:15 / 20.12.03
i just saw this movie for the first time, after missing it in the theater and having everyone i know up my ass about it for what seems like forever.

wow, talk about not living up to the hype.

Ellen Burstyn is great. most of the acting, actually, is great. also, the total depth of emptiness in Sara Goldfarb's life is chilling, and about the one novel thing about this movie is that it's nice to see a drug addict other than a young, sexy person doing sexy drugs.

however, the movie dove straight into hyperbole and melodrama and just plain silliness. oh, no! here comes the evil fridge!

i really liked Pi, though.

my friends and i walked around saying "Go ass to ass!" almost non-stop.

i suspect i will be, too. that was fucking hysterical....
 
 
Bed Head
12:14 / 20.12.03
Ooooh, I’m glad you revived this thread Diz! I had thought I was the only person in the universe who thought ‘Requiem..’ was a bit shit. Thank Christ I’m not alone!

Yeah, right, to the vein thing. Yeah, right to the shaky camerawork, also does Jennifer Connoley’s character really go from fine, upstanding, educated citizen to hopeless smack-whore in the space of - what? Three months? So, yeah, right to that, too. And WTF is ECT supposed to be achieving in Ellen Burstyn’s case anyway? Its just amphetamine withdrawal isn’t it? Not pleasant, but surely brain-melting isn’t the standard treatment (of course, I don’t know jack shit about this, maybe ECT really *is* the standard treatment to get someone off, er, diet pills. Which she’s only been taking for a couple of months). Also, what exactly is Tyrone arrested and imprisoned for when he’s on his way to Florida: for being in the company of a junkie? And, aand - I’m afraid I have serious problems with the bloody stupid plot device that there isn’t any heroin in New York whatsofuckinever, and so these two chancers are driving all the way to Florida to pick some up. Sorry, what? No heroin in *New York*?

- Oh sorry, I mean to say, ‘no heroin in New York except for that held by ghastly ‘Big Tim’, who’s only interested in trading it for girls’. And even then, what, these up-and-coming drug dealers don’t have any other desperate customers they can pimp? That’s what real drug dealers would do.

Tell me I’m wrong, Barbelith, please! I fear my piddling objections are preventing me from feeling the full emotional effect of this fabulous piece of cinematic art.

Nice soundtrack though, lovely cinematography: a well-crafted artifact. And an exceptionally gorgeous cast. But if it was a stick of rock, I think it’d have ‘a bit silly’ written all the way through it.
 
 
rizla mission
14:26 / 21.12.03
I expect a lot of this comes from Selby. I haven't read Requiem for a Dream, but The Room, Last Exit to Brooklyn and The Demon create the impression that he really doesn't like people very much. He certainly doesn't treat any of the people he puts in his books as if he likes them.

I'd disagree entirely. Selby invests his characters with absolutely tons of emotion and empathy and hope and humanity etc. - hence why it's so devastating and cathartic when indescribably terrible things happen to them.

His books are emphatically NOT nihilistic or misanthropic - instead they deal with the tragedy of hope being crushed and human potential being destroyed, not because the characters are *bad* or *deserve it* or some crap like that, but because they're too weak to deal with the pressures and troubles thrown at them by the outside world.

(hey, talking about books in the film forum makes a change from talking about films in the books forum!)

For what it's worth, to a certain extent I actually agree with a lot of the criticisms of Requiem for a Dream expressed in this thread - it's not a perfect film - but I don't think the flaws should be allowed to distract from it's strengths as a breathtaking piece of film-making..
 
 
diz
17:03 / 22.12.03
Also, what exactly is Tyrone arrested and imprisoned for when he’s on his way to Florida: for being in the company of a junkie?

yes, exactly. how long could he possibly be in jail for? if he had large quantities of heroin on him, he wouldn't be on the road trip, and if he didn't, he's not likely to go to jail for very long.

Sorry, what? No heroin in *New York*?

yeah, i found this unconvincing, to say the least.

Oh sorry, I mean to say, ‘no heroin in New York except for that held by ghastly ‘Big Tim’, who’s only interested in trading it for girls’.

i might be inclined to say "ghastly black 'Big Tim', who’s only interested in trading it for white girls"

it's like Soderbergh's Traffic in that way, playing on white fears of their sisters and daughters getting humped by big black negroes in a way that's kind of objectionable to me. it uses white fears about black men's sexuality to serve as a marker of how far the white female character has fallen. sex with a black male is on the same level, thematically, with prison, ECT, and amputation. look how desparate she's become - she's willing to fuck a black man! ick. just ick.

His books are emphatically NOT nihilistic or misanthropic - instead they deal with the tragedy of hope being crushed and human potential being destroyed, not because the characters are *bad* or *deserve it* or some crap like that,

well, maybe that hasn't carried over into the movies made of his work, but both Requiem and Last Exit struck me as somewhat misanthropic and definitely punitive, moralistic, and self-righteous. in Last Exit, the woman who flaunts her sexuality gets gang-raped, and the repressed homosexual degenerates into self-tormenting pedophilia. in Requiem, everyone gets fucked, in one case literally, in ways that strongly suggest that they brought it on themselves. to a certain degree, this is least true with Sara (who's old and lonely), and most true with Marian (who chooses junkiedom over a life of privelege to spite her parents), but the comically overdone endings of each character arc really seem like someone's out to get them.

but I don't think the flaws should be allowed to distract from it's strengths as a breathtaking piece of film-making.

in general, i'm willing to overlook flaws in a lot of movies, but i just didn't find this one terribly breathtaking, certainly not to the degree that i'd be inclined to overlook its flaws.
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
00:57 / 04.04.05
Shit, how late can you be to a party?

Just saw this tonight! Better late than never!

Would add that re: the no heroin in new york thing :
1) Adapted from the novel, so not entirely a failing of the movie per se
2) I actually read it to mean 'of sufficiently high enough purity and quality' for the protagonists, who start off quite fussy about their drugs...
 
  
Add Your Reply