Requiem for a Dream (Penguin Modern Classics)

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The novel was grimly forensic in detailing the physical and mental destruction wrought by drug addiction on a quartet of characters: three of them connected in their youth and knowing submission to heroin, and the fourth an elderly Brooklyn widow, drawn obliviously into amphetamine psychosis by solitude, TV fixation and irresponsibly prescribed diet pills. It’s a slender story that makes its essential points early, often and obviously: we’re all vulnerable to some manner of addiction, and legal ones aren’t necessarily safer or less ruinous than their underworld counterparts. Smith, C. Molly. "The ubiquitous 'Requiem for a Dream' score is 15 years old". EW.com. Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on July 10, 2018 . Retrieved March 6, 2018. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (18)". British Board of Film Classification. November 23, 2000. Archived from the original on April 16, 2014 . Retrieved January 1, 2013. Litteer: It’s a great film. As someone who’s known a lot of people who’ve had problems with addiction, it’s a very sad thing to watch someone go down like that. But [playing my part] did affect me being able to break out of that, to being more of a serious actress. I think that I thought it was going to be the thing that would catapult me into more success. But it was hard for me to get people to see me in other ways. Once I was doing a concert at Joe’s Pub and I finished and somebody screamed “Ass to ass.” I’m not bitter at all — I’m happy to have been part of such a cool film and I’m ready to do more things. But in the end, I feel like I’m the Requiem for a Dream girl. Burstyn (left) and Leto (right) received critical acclaim for their performances as Sara and Harry Goldfarb, respectively. [38] [39]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian lauded the film as an "agonising and unflinchingly grim portrait of drug abuse" and "a formally pleasing piece of work—if pleasing can possibly be the right word". [45] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote that "no one interested in the power and magic of movies should miss it". [46] Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, who gave the work an "A" grade, argued that it "may be the first movie to fully capture the way drugs dislocate us from ourselves" and said, "The movie, a full-throttle mind-bender, is hypnotically harrowing and intense, a visual and spiritual plunge into the seduction and terror of drug addiction". [47] Scott Brake of IGN gave the film a 9.0 out of 10 and argued, "The reason it works so well as a film about addiction is that, in every frame, the film itself is addictive. It's absolutely relentless, from Aronofsky's bravura cinematic techniques (split screens, complex cross-cutting schemes, hallucinatory visuals) to Clint Mansell's driving, hypnotic score (performed by the Kronos Quartet), the movie compels you to watch it". [48] Stark, Jeff (October 13, 2000). "It's a punk movie". Salon. Archived from the original on February 5, 2019 . Retrieved July 3, 2019. Clint Mansell, music: Darren had wanted a hip-hop score to reflect the music he’d listened to growing up in Brooklyn. I remember him sending me a clip of the scene where Ellen Burstyn first takes the speed pills. He put “She Watch Channel Zero?!” by Public Enemy under it. It was fantastic, just brilliant, but it didn’t do anything but say, “Oh, that’s cool.” There was no subtext to it. We realized at that point we were in trouble. I had written a lot of stuff in advance, but in this hip-hopish vein. When I started seeing the rough edit, we put the music to it, and nothing really latched on. I nearly quit at one point because I didn’t think I could do it. The ending just had no relief. The ramp-up was taking it as far as we possibly could to land on the three of them curled up in the fetal position. That’s probably somewhat what I looked like by the end of that job.Ebert, Roger (November 3, 2000). "Requiem for a Dream". RogerEbert.com. Ebert Digital LLC. Archived from the original on July 17, 2018 . Retrieved May 31, 2018.

Darren Aronofsky, director: When I was a freshman in college, I was walking through the library and out of the corner of my eye, saw the word “Brooklyn.” I grew up in Brooklyn, so I pulled it out, and it was Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. It completely blew my mind, that book, and just made me start thinking about being a storyteller. Past Bram Stoker Nominees & Winners". Horror Writers Association. Archived from the original on October 17, 2017 . Retrieved October 12, 2021.The cult Japanese filmmaker that inspired Darren Aronofsky". Dazed. August 27, 2015. Archived from the original on November 12, 2018 . Retrieved November 12, 2018.

Ebert, Roger (November 17, 2002). "The Movie Answer Man". Archived from the original on August 4, 2019 . Retrieved January 8, 2014. Connelly: I was so impressed by Matty and the way he worked. It was a totally different style of filmmaking than I had experienced. For example, there’s a scene where I have a camera rig on that I was wearing. I had never done anything like that before. Mitchell, Elvis (October 6, 2000). "Movie Review: Requiem for a Dream". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 16, 2014 . Retrieved December 10, 2020. Aronofsky alternates between extreme close-ups and extreme distance from the action, with sharp cuts between reality and characters' fantasies. [27] The camerawork forces the viewer to explore the characters' states of mind, hallucinations, visual distortions, and inaccurate sense of time. [33] The average length of scenes also shortens as the film progresses, from around 90 seconds to 2 minutes in the beginning, until the climactic scenes, which are cut very rapidly accompanied by incidental music. After the climax, there is a short period of silence and serenity. Pixelation and a fish-eye lens are also techniques used to help reinforce the effect of drugs and the viewer's distance from the character. [27] Reception [ edit ] Box office [ edit ]

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During a grocery store scene, real drug addicts were brought in as extras. Aronofsky has recalled that some were injecting themselves during filming. [10] One bathtub scene was inspired by Satoshi Kon's 1997 anime film Perfect Blue. [24] Post-production also included approximately 150 special effects, created by Amoeba Proteus, a digital effects company formed by Aronofsky and his friends. [10] [11] After filming was completed, Burstyn said, "I don't think I've ever been this challenged in a role—it was harder than The Exorcist" . [25] Connelly also spoke of how "it was hard, really hard to go through, emotionally. It was draining, sad, and uncomfortable". [15] Editing [ edit ] Rabinowitz: It was upsetting to me, how far he pushed the actors. That led us into an elaborate conversation because he was like, “Why is everybody so sensitive about sex but you can show people getting killed?” And I remember one of my arguments was, “Yeah, but the killing is fake and so is the sex.” The ramp up at the end was mathematical, but that was not so much the case with that wild sex party. We had to sift and sift — it wasn’t as beautifully designed as everything else he was doing. I’m proud of what we did, it came out pretty good.

It is not long before she learns to compromise: “Well, it really depends on how you measure: loose or tight. All Sara did was push out the air between the pieces of lettuce.” From self-deceit Sara moves to obsession to other states of “altered consciousness” in which her mind is dominated by images of eating as Selby astutely uses dreamlike phenomena as strategies of indirect discourse to move our consciousness along with that of the character: “A couple of nights of dreaming and Sara decided enough already. She got the name of the doctor from her lady friend and made an appointment. I dont know from diet pills, but eggs and grapefruit Ive had up to here thank you.” The diet pills are not, then, the first step in what leads to Sara’s psychotic undoing; the first step is her addiction to the American dream, as she watches it on the screen, as she eats it from the seductive boxes. Rabinowitz: We took a still frame from every image, from a certain point to the end, and we pasted them around the editing room. The first time you would get maybe 12 frames of each image. The second time you would get maybe one less. Each one was a few frames shorter.Requiem for a Dream (2020) - An opera adaptation of the book and film composed by Michael Gordon and directed by James Darrah. It premiered at the Minnesota Opera in April 2020. It was a scene that was important to the film,” Jennifer Connelly tells Vulture. “But I don’t remember personally feeling comfortable doing it.” In preparation for filming, Leto spent time living on the streets of New York, surrounded by people who were in the same situation as his character. [17] [18] He also starved himself for months, losing 28 pounds (13kg) to play his heroin-addicted character realistically. [19] Aronofsky requested that Leto and Wayans refrain from having sex and consuming sugar so that their cravings would appear genuine on-screen. [8] Burstyn also spent time in Brooklyn, learning about the lives of particular women, and how narrow they were. "Their life is about getting enough money to put food on the table to feed their children, and that's it", she said. [20] Connelly prepared for the role by renting an apartment in the building where the character lived. Connelly isolated herself, painted, listened to music that she thought Marion would, designed clothes, and used the time to reflect about addictions and their origin. She also talked to addicts and attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings with a recovering friend. [21] Filming [ edit ] In addition, Requiem for a Dream examines the way society views addiction and those who suffer from it. It looks at how society often views addicts as outcasts or “losers” and how this contributes to feelings of loneliness and isolation.