Requiem For A Dream

I thought trying to write about Once Upon A Time In The West was hard. That time, it was because I am so utterly taken with the film that I struggled to write anything more coherent than pure, gushing praise. With Requiem I knew I was in for a tougher time. Here's why:

I should have guessed from the title. Really, one should take the title as an obvious warning that we are going to watch the death and celebration-in-death of a dream/hope/chance/ideal/escape. Yet when I started to watch this film, I didn't pause to think "hang on, this one could get really sad", I just settled in and let it roll. I'd watched Pi already, and I have good friends who rate both Aronofsky films highly. Like Pi, Requiem entices with a killer soundtrack, solid acting, and Aronofsky's trademark disjointed cinematography. In fact, some of the key players were really made on this film (I'm thinking Connelly and Leto here) as it was a semi-indie film that got widespread acclaim. Anyway, I'd loved Pi (review to follow anon). But the word 'love' cannot come anywhere near a review of Requiem because the negative emotions that this film conjured for me still leave me feeling awkward and...depressed? hurt? fragile? Fragile is probably closest.

I've finally got around to writing this because I finally figured out what was so shocking and upsetting about the film.

It's a fairly simple set-up. As Sara (Burstyn) decides to lose weight as she is desperate to be on TV, she ends up taking uppers to fight her appetite, leaving her a wreck. Meanwhile her son Harry (Leto), his girlfriend Marion (Connelly) and friend Tyrone (Wayans) spend a summer dealing drugs and getting high. Their addictions are manageable because they are doing so well out of it. By the autumn things sour: Sara is a shred of her former self, and starting to hallucinate wildly; the police crack down on drug dealers and Harry, Tyrone and Marion find themselves strapped for cash and a hit. As the film builds to its climax, it becomes apparent that there is no way out for these people - their dreams of the summer had been exactly that. Sara is taken in to hospital and given shock therapy to battle her addiction; Harry's infected injection wound leads to his arm being amputated; Tyrone is arrested and sent to prison; Marion's increasing desperation to score has led her to prostitution. All carefully spliced together into a brutal montage of shots in the closing minutes of the film.

It's Marion's position that messed with my mind the most, and here is the key to why I was left so thoroughly pained by watching - her humiliation is before a group of suits, who mock and goad her to perform for them. By watching, the viewer is implicitly made a part of that group. It was only now that I realised why I was left with such a bitter taste in my mouth: I was a part of her degradation to score. If I'm honest, it still bothers me now.

A fantastic film, and a brilliant follow-up to Pi, as Aronofsky branches out as a director and elicits some excellent performances from his actors. But NOT FOR THE FAINT-HEARTED.

***
2000

Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans

Dir. Darren Aronofsky

Based on the book by Hubert Selby Jr.

Once Upon A Time In The West

Where do I really begin with this film? I've watched it now maybe three times, and loved it each and every time, for pretty much every second. I just can't really find anything wrong with it: it sums up perfectly the mood of the 'classic' western - slow-paced, bubbling with intensity, gritty, brutal - but it's also Leone's exploration, as he put it, of death. Cheyenne (Robbards), trying to explain Harmonica (Bronson) to Jill (Cardinale), says: "People like that have something inside... something to do with death". Leone conjured up not one but two characters completely intent on death, Frank (Fonda) and Harmonica, and some of the most memorable exchanges in the film are from when these two meet.

Frank, the ruthless gang-leader, is out to stop anyone in his way; Cheyenne works as a part-time lackey to him, but his heart isn't in the work; Harmonica is something of a mystery, but is intent on reaching Frank. So the plot plays out, step by step, frame by frame, as they pace towards a final confrontation.

It's something with everything being in its right place in this film that makes it all the more chilling: each element, each scene, slots together so neatly that there is a sense of inevitability, of destiny built into the film. And walking hand-in-hand with that, Morricone's score rivals The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It is absolutely haunting, and as a mood-influencer, used to perfection. Simple refrains, anchored to the characters, come back time and again, fluctuating and changing, signalling the mood and pace. In the second scene of the film, when Jill's stepson runs out of the farm door to find Frank (you'll know the scene I mean if you've seen the film; if you haven't, I'm trying not to spoil it), the explosion of sound that greets him enhances the ensuing action wondrously and chillingly.

I'm struggling with this because it is hard to write about something one loves without sound so overly enthused that it seems unbalanced. But in short, it's a wonderful film, because it tries to tackle a very complex question (death) and does so in a stripped-down, chilling manner, where mood is all. It drew me in so completely and provided me with something utterly involving and moving. Perfect cinema.

*****
1968

Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robbards, Charles Bronson
Dir. Sergio Leone

Music - Ennio Morricone

Mission statement? Matement....

It's simple. I've had some time out of work (let's call that a "gap" "year") and I got to watching some good films (thank you lovefilm), listening to some great music and reading some brilliant books. I wanted to write about them, as a record. Not for anyone else really, just because I enjoyed them and liked them and wanted to remember my own thoughts and opinions about them.

Disclaimer: my opinions are in no way more important that yours. I'd never think that. I'm fully aware my opinions count for squat, but I just wanted to get 'em down anyway...

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

READ THIS BOOK! It is beautiful and moving and poignant and funny and epic and destructive and emotional and wondrous and uplifting and crushing and brilliant and excellently-researched and absorbing and monstrous and great!

The book charts the rise to success of Josef Kavalier, a Czech Jew who escapes persecution prior to the Second World War to New York, and his American cousin Sam Clay. They are both 17, and combine Sam's imagination with Joe's artistic talent to start making comics. Their first success is with The Escapist, a comic that Chabon invented in keeping with those that abounded at the rise of the graphic novel in the 30s and 40s. (The book did so well that a real life version of The Escapist was written)

The plot is rife with twists and turns, and both Joe and Sam share a fair amount of ups and downs as they go from naive, idealistic cartoonists to powerful creative forces in the American graphic novel market. There's more than a fair share of heartbreak as well; any story that is bookended by the Second World War comes with a liberal dose of pathos. It's here that Chabon manages the story best. While his research of New York of the 30s and 40s is astounding, and one really starts to wonder if The Escapist did not in fact exist as a comic, it's the little details and the emotions of his characters that evoke a smile and more than once, a tear. Ultimately it's a heart-rending story about so many things it would be trite to start listing them. But it leaves one with the calm of a post-emotional breakdown and the joy of the resilience of the human spirit. Uplifting.


"that was totally wicked!"


*****
by Michael Chabon