51 GREATEST FICTIONAL BAD GUYS
#27. ADDICTION from REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
I defy anyone to find a more tense, stomach-churning and harrowing 35 minutes that’s been committed to film than the last third of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. The story itself is a threadbare narrative, following four people desperately seeking the same thing — but filling that void with the worst things possible. The last half hour is an escalating montage of images that serve as the best anti-drug campaign on the planet. It’s also a work of absolute art.
REQUIEM is a horror movie. Addiction is the monster. Ellen Burstyn’s mission to save her daughter from the devil in THE EXORCIST looks like a day at the spa when you see her confronted by Freudian informercials and a fridge lunging forward like a panther on the veldt. And that’s before the electro-shock therapy. Jesus.
I’m sure there’s an argument to be made for drug use (no, I actually doubt it). But the impulse to replace love with a chemical fix doesn’t end up too well for our heroes here. It serves as a reminder of how everything gets lost when you fall forever down that rabbit hole. Here, addiction devolves into hard labor, body mutilation, psychosis and loss of one’s soul. Screw the “this is your brain on drugs” commercials, I’m showing my kids this when they’re 13 years old.
Marion: “Getting the money’s not the problem Harry.”
Harry: “Then what’s the problem?”
Marion: “I don’t know what I’m going to have to do to get it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipQAlFUGdGc
