"Requiem for Dreams" is not a requiem, on the contrary, it is a desperate film, only darkness without warmth. Douban score 8.7, the author believes that few people will brush it a second time. At the time of the American film review, because it felt that the end of the film was offensive, the MPAA rated the film as NC-17. (Under the age of 17 is not allowed to watch movies) This also caused a downturn in the box office at that time.
At that time, the director of the film refused to modify the end of the film, and finally it could only be released in the form of "unrated", which was released in France on May 14, 2000.
Requiem for Dreams is about four low-level marginal characters. Son Harry is a drug addict "in pursuit of a better life"; her mother Sarah weaves herself a "TV star dream" because of her lonely and solitary life in her later years, and she is addicted to drugs by swallowing diet pills like crazy. Marianne and Harry are lovers, she has a dream of costumes, but eventually drifts away from her dreams because of drugs; Dillon and Harry are also drug addicts who pursue sensual enjoyment, and in order to make a lot of money, they end up miserable.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > shots tend to be more than narrative, but inner expression. </h1>
At the middle of the film, the director connects the two lines of mother and child, making drug use a broad sense. The drug addiction in the film is actually like a real-life desire, it devours everyone, makes them unconsciously addicted, and finally falls into the whirlpool of life tragedy!
When I first watched it for the first time, I deeply thought that this was a film about human desire and redemption, and the director also warmly mixed with the love and companionship of his family.
But looking at it after a few years has overturned the movie-going experience of that year. Maybe this is not a story about the redemption and truth of life, the purpose of the film is not to tell you how terrible the drug really is, it is not warm and redeeming, the director will be black to the end, in the end completely shattered your hopes.
From "Black Swan" and "Wrestling King", it can be seen that he is a director who is committed to excavating and exposing the darkness of human nature, and his powerful editing techniques and montage use, full of tension lens language, can always make the audience tighten the strings in their hearts.
In "Requiem for Dreams", the director also uses the most intuitive shooting method to reveal the depravity and despair of human nature, showing the endless pain of life.
The film exudes an air of despair from beginning to end, allowing you to see the protagonists going to the abyss of despair and darkness one by one, just like Harry in the film, unable to redeem his mother and girlfriend, he can only watch everything happen. The audience can only watch the protagonist step by step toward despair, as if he is immersed in the scene, but there is nothing he can do.
If you pay enough attention, you will find that the director has another arrangement in terms of metaphor. It's a story without spring, and the film begins in the summer and ends in the winter. Spring symbolizes vitality, symbolizes the revival of all things, and the director's metaphor is to tell us that the protagonists in this story have no spring and no future!
Every time you revisit Requiem for Dreams, it's like watching a horror movie, and although no one dies or goes bloody, they all end up dead. Struggling to survive in the separation of reality and ideals, unable to extricate themselves. When the protagonists fantasize about the future, they do not know that they have already fallen into the abyss of fate and will die.
The director used a lot of handheld and follow-up shooting to shoot this film, which brought a strange visual impact to the audience. His unique editing style makes the entire film extremely tense, bombarding the audience's brain and heart over and over again.
Every detail is magnified and close-up by the director, and the hallucinations after drug use, the despair of reality, the contradiction between reality and illusion can make your heart tighten suddenly.
The montage technique is the biggest highlight of the film, the director breaks up and materializes the subjective world, thus highlighting the alienation of the characters. When showing drug use, the director flashed many close-up shots of drug use together, so that the audience could more intuitively feel the psychedelic and pleasure of drug addicts. The fast shots of drug dealing can also make the audience feel the state of anxiety and confusion.
The director also uses parallel montages to express the mother during the weight loss period. The camera progresses horizontally and gently, but suddenly accelerates the mother's movements; while the mother walks slowly in the crowd, the crowd is accelerating. These alternating shots of speed and slowness all highlight the decline of the protagonist after alienation.
Multi-angle shots are also heavily used in the film: TV commercials playing meat, focusing on the refrigerator, to close-ups of mother Sully's facial expressions, and finally the climax is the mother's nearly collapsed eyes and the action of turning the TV on and off.
Harry caressed and snuggled up with his girlfriend Marianne, and the director close-uped his fingers brushed every inch of his skin. But at the end, it stays on the faces of the two people, and the cold and warm tones contrast, and the two are divided into two, which indicates the final end of the two.
The film portrays the mother's sense of pathology in her own fantasy ideology, using perspective and CG composite shots.
The refrigerator is actually a product of the mother's fantasy, and it is more like representing the spiritual level of the mother. When the camera zooms in on the refrigerator, it means that the spirit of the mother Sally is close to collapse.
The author believes that the director is the most moving when portraying the role of the mother. The mother told her son why she was taking diet pills, and she did not intend to stop even if she understood that the flowery pills would kill her.
When her son Harry asked her, "You have friends, Mom." ”
The mother smiled helplessly and said, "No, they are different, they don't need me." ”
What a poignant conversation, old age and loneliness, husbands dead, sons moving out, and the only companionship left was sweets and television. She said her friends didn't need her, and her son didn't need her, and the meaning of her life became an invitation to that TV show.
This reminds me of a quote by Marx Weber: Man is an animal hanging from the web of meaning he has compiled.
When human beings can't find a reason to survive in real life, they will pursue the above-mentioned empty heads, and even rely on imaginary meanings to hang their lives on this net!
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > choose meaning or not? </h1>
In Er Dongsheng's "Disciple", Ah Fen, played by Zhang Jingchu, is extremely disgusted with drugs but cannot resist the false pleasure after being stained. As long as the blood vessel can be found, she has been injected, and finally the aorta is injected to death.
This is like Harry in Requiem for Dreams, who repeatedly injects drugs even though his hand has festered, resulting in the final removal of the entire arm.
They all have a beautiful vision of life, and when they can't achieve it, they choose to use drugs to satisfy their fantasies, and when the dream is swallowed by drugs, the tragic fate is coming.
Someone said: "It's also a classic drug scene, if 'Requiem for Dreams' is the director showing you destruction, then you should look at the sensuality of Guess the Train." "
In "Guess the Train" director Danny. Boyle combines the dirty toilet and the ocean, making the two wonderfully intertwined. When Mark went into Scotland's dirtiest toilet, under the toilet Mark saw the clear ocean; after taking drugs, the vision was like a large red pit, and there were crawling babies in the ceiling.
In "Requiem for Dreams", mother Sally sees the eating refrigerator after taking diet pills, the host running out of the TV, and the sweets that keep appearing in front of her.
What "Guess the Train" and "Requiem of Dreams" have in common is that the two directors portray the drug addiction of drug addicts to the fullest, so that the audience can more intuitively feel the psychedelic of addicts.
Both films are tragic, and their core is about the choices and meanings of life. At the end of "Guess the Train", Mark seems to have become a "normal person". The confessions at the end have all the options of life:
Choose life, work, family, put on the big TV, washing machine, car, laser record player, electric switch, will be very healthy, low cholesterol, have dentist insurance, mortgage, buy a house, casual wear, suitcase, three-piece suit, diy, watch TV, eat snacks, have children, visit the park, nine to five, play golf, wash the car, wear sweatshirts, christmas, pension, have tax allowance, sewers, reform until the day of death.
The choices will become endless, and eventually we will eventually become sad creatures drowning in a materialistic world, and the reason why the director uses this alternative ending is to tell the audience that no matter what choice you make, your life will not have any meaning in the end.
At the end of "Requiem for Dreams", the four protagonists are like returning to the sleeping position of the mother's infancy, curled up and hugged themselves, hoping to get a touch of false warmth in the dream.
Harry amputated his leg with sores and pus; Marianne sold her self-esteem and body for drugs; her mother, Sally, ended up having mental problems with her own torment; Dillon was imprisoned. They choose the spiritual pleasure brought about by drugs and ignore the pain of the flesh in reality, because desire and addiction fall into the abyss, so they can only wait for death in silence.
Watch as the loved ones around you fall into the abyss, but you can't save them. Protagonists without a future are trapped in the vortex of desire and cannot extricate themselves. Perhaps the protagonists still have a choice, but no one is willing to escape the subjective feeling of drug hallucination to choose!
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > drugs – the carriers of cruelty in real society. </h1>
Man is not only realistic, he also has spiritual fantasies. The interweaving of reality and fantasy creates a complete person. Spirit and body contradict each other and coexist with each other, and we cannot ignore any part of them.
When we simply indulge in fantasy worlds, we tend to start escaping from real society, and suffering will be everywhere. The director of "Requiem for Dreams" presents human nature to you with a sharp knife, so that you have to admit its existence.
Although the film is absurd and dark, art comes from life. Behind the drugs, there is more lack of spiritual pillars, and the drug addiction in the film is put into the real society, which is a broad dream addiction.
As independent film critic Junko Kitajima said: The theme of the film has nothing to do with drugs and addiction, poison is desire, addiction is greed, it is something that a person is born with, hidden by the soul. If they live forever, it's not because reality is always disappointing.
Many of us are driven by the interests of society, and like the protagonists of the film, people who suffer from delusion and pain abound, or are manipulated by addiction without knowing it.
Perhaps it is the addiction of smokers, the addiction of drinkers, the addiction of games that reach all night, all of which accelerate the operation of life. Or the addiction of escaping from the real world, indulging in the Internet world, and the addiction of crazy plastic surgery after aesthetic deformity. These addictions occupy many people's lives, perhaps this is far easier than drugs, but how many people who are addicted to these addictions can really distinguish between real and unreal?
The drug addiction in the movie is like the addiction of various desires in the real society, only by maintaining a sober will, you can make the spirit and the body live at the same time, living in this real society.
Finally, the author wants to set a correct banner, even if the focus of the film is not on drugs, but still hope that everyone understands: drugs will destroy your life, disintegrate your thoughts, so please stay away from drugs and cherish life!
bibliography:
[1] Jill Deleuze. Time-image[M].Translated by Xie Qiang et al. Changsha:Hunan Fine Arts Publishing House,2004.]