Requiem for a Dream

Darren Aronofsky based his film, Requiem for a Dream, on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr. In the hands of director Aronofsky, it becomes a cinematic masterpiece that will certainly rattle anyone’s complacency about the nature of dependency. In writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s film, Requiem for a Dream, the audience is given an unforgettable experience as they watch the lives of four protagonists become undone by their various addictions. Their circumstances become more …

…they realize that they each have substituted one addiction for another. As Fall and Winter roll around, their individual addictions end up completely consuming them, and their lives are reduced to little more than a vicious cycle of torment and desperation. Darren Aronofsky uses a very unique visual style in this film. In order to convey the increasingly altered mental state of the protagonists, he employs quick-cutting, extreme close-ups, exaggerated sound effects, and hallucinatory cinematography.