nixsight

There are about a million different ways that something can be sad, but I reckon our language lacks the necessary architecture to easily explain most of them to other people concisely.

This is how, after months – actually, probably years – of me telling Girl One that I loved “Requiem For A Dream”, but me making excuses for why I didn’t want to watch it again whenever she raised the option, we finally sat down to it on Tuesday.

Last week, a couple in our acquaintance had enthused about the film, reminding us both about the long standing, often delayed, appointment we had with it. Then, Girl One had had a shitty day at work, and come home wanting to, in her words, “watch something sad”.

I tried to tell her that it wasn’t really that kind of a sad film. Which, of course, sounds dumb. So we watched it.

The good thing about those million different kinds of sadness I mentioned before? Once someone experiences one of them, suddenly it’s a bit less of a mystery to them. And now Girl One realises why I never wanted to watch the film again.

Someone just raised the criticism that the film is a pretty shallow experience, and that – I’m paraphrasing – the characters are never developed. That it uses melodrama – and I’d add editing trickery – to trick the viewer into a sense of profundity.

And after a fashion, I agree, though I’d also add that looked at through squinting eyes, I think you can say that about most movies about addiction or drug abuse.

In the case of “Requiem For A Dream”, though – and whether or not it’s more luck than judgement by Darren Aronofsky, who directed it, and Hubert Selby Jr who co-wrote the screenplay based on his own novel – I think the technique is really effective.

(Quite aside from which, I wonder if that flatness and bluntness of tone doesn’t come as much from the original text as the moviemakers.)

What adds to it is how closely the director or editor and Clint Mansell who composed the soundtrack – with notable contributions by the Kronos Quartet – must have worked together. The music isn’t just there for mood, in this movie – it’s part of a perfect synthesis of sound and video editing. As such, though much of the dialogue is very melodramatic and one-note – and the acting very theatrical and stagey to live up to it – I never feel myself particularly taken out of the narrative, because the music brings it all together.

The overall effect for me is less one of a film with not much depth of story or character, and more one of one of the best audio-visual installation pieces I’ve ever seen – from which point of view the inclusion of a narrative or point at all seems like a glorious bonus. Mansell’s contribution lends a swelling drama to proceedings when needed, and at other times takes the metronomic backseat of one of John Carpenter’s best scores. At times, it almost feels as if the music came first – it’s a symphony, and it makes the film feel like more of a complete package.

The content, what there is of it, is often very effective. Jared Leto and Marlan Wayans aren’t asked to do much except fit into whatever pose fits Aronofsky’s composition, and not fuck up their character’s expressions, and that does the trick – as the criticisms I’ve mentioned suggest, for the most part their characters are cyphers, really. Leto does impress in one particular scene, with a very convincing breakdown in the backseat of a car, though the real emotional impetus of the scene comes from the one that it follows – an absolutely heart-wrenchingly horrible monologue from Ellen Burstyn as his mother Sara Goldfarb which forms the true emotional anchor to the film – the keystone on which every other element of the script touches, at some point.

Basically, it’s Burstyn’s performance – and Sara Goldfarb’s story – which gets the response from me from which every other scene feeds. Her loneliness and isolation, as well as her innate sweetness, is the poor broken heart at the center of the movie. It actually caught me by surprise how much her situation touched me, second time around – I honestly thought knowing what was coming might prepare me for it somehow, but all of her scenes, especially in the second act, just killed me.

And of course, Jennifer Connelly does a great job with a character that would have either dissappeared or annoyed in anyone else’s hands. She’s a massively underrated actress who possibly hasn’t ever been as much of an indie hit as she could be because of her incredible beauty, but whose acting is understated and natural enough that she’s unlikely to ever get any of the really major roles. But even when she’s not doing much on screen, she is incredible to look at, so as long as she’s getting screen time, I won’t complain!

So now I don’t need to see this film again for another few years. Yay.