Amanda: Requiem For a Dream

I think this movie greatly succeeded in portraying substance abuse in a different light, and although done in a harsh, hard to swallow way, it forced viewers to seperate the individuals from the drugs. I by no means think the director takes all the responsibility off of people who use drugs, but I view his intense interpretation as a compassionate attempt at opening a naïve audience’s eyes to what it would be like to be in Harry, Sara, Marion or Tyrone’s place. If for example, we only saw Marion selling her body for drugs prior to any background or development of her charcter, we may think to ourselves, “look what she’s doing to herself,” but instead, we see her and think, “look what the drugs are doing to her.”

The movie’s strongest point is this heavy focus on the background story of each character, allowing the audience to be introduced to their lives before the drugs have taken complete control of their actions. In doing this, the circumstance surrounding substance abuse is highlighted, and viewers are forced to attach themselves to each of the characters while watching tragedy unfold.

One of the main ways this film is able to provoke emotion and as well as depict the highs and lows of drug use is through it’s unique and experimental cinemotographic techniques. The visuals in this film give viewers a better understanding of what it is like quickly fall into addiction, and have the drugs change who you are. The quick scene changes, loud noises, and use of repetitive shots all add to the mood set by the film, and draw the viewers closer into the characters lives. Many shots are strange and atypical often placing the viewers in the same confused and desperate state as the characters in the film.

Substance abuse is a very common topic for films and generally in movies the evil characters are seen as the ones with problems of addiction. This portrayal in popular culture, whether we are conscious of it or not, forces viewers to link drug use with this idea of ‘bad people.’ Requiem For a Dream boldly choses to stray from this pattern, and instead it attempts to show the awful destruction of valuable, meaningful human lives.