Requiem for A Dream

A psychological drama film with four main characters, four different styles of drug addictions, four failures lives which able leads the audiences to know better the darkness of Drugs. This film is so realistic since it is all about the dark side of humanity on drugs, fame, money, and sex.

I actually felt tired after watching this film in class since I so got into in it. The pace of this film was so fast to make me unable to take a break. Of course, the sound effects also played a very important role to serve the excitement in the storyline so well.



What is editing?
'Editing is the basic creative force, by power of which the soulless photographs (the separate shots) are engineered into living, cinematographic form.' - V.I. Pudovkin, director

Yes, in my opinion, editing is a powerful tool to filter the flaws, joins all of the best shots together, enhances the film with various of vision and audio effects.
I believed that most of the audiences are impressed by the editing skills in 'Requiem for A Dream' on how the director delivered his ideas and messages for us.

The use of split screen technique is interesting and new for me because I seldom watch a film with this technique with frequent appearances. I like the way director split the screen in the beginning of the film to show the quarrel between mother and son, Harry and Sara. It able to present Harry's anger and Sara's fear in a frame. Another unforgettable scene with split screen is Harry has a pillow conversation with his girlfriend, Marion. Their bodies part are shown at the same time with extreme close up until not exactly able to see who they are but able to confirm via the voices and Marion's blue nail color.
Why director split the love scene since they were lying in the same bed? When I saw this scene, I'm was thinking: this lovely couple must not having a happy ending. I think that this was director's intent: to make the audiences have a feeling which they are 'so close yet so far'. Their love was so real but still has a gap which leads to collapse easily.

One of the marvelous editing technique we have discussed in the class was the fast cut and arrangement of the random shots which a.k.a montage. I discovered montage techniques have been used on two different actions: the act of drugs consumption and the characters cut and sell the drugs on the streets. The montage might just appear on the screen for only a few seconds, but it able to present the whole process of drugs consumption with step by step: pour out the drugs, burn it, boil the water, prepare the injection, roll the paper money to suck the drugs and finally found the pleasure after consumption the drugs. The sound effects on every single step were emphasized to enhance the actions.
I think this technique is so powerful to avoid audiences to get bored but able to repeat it again and again to show the characters taking the drugs all the time.

I found interesting elements in cinematography has been used in the film which was the director used fish-eye lens in several scenes. In my opinion, fish-eye lens able to enlarge the facial expression of the actors in a medium shot. This mise-en-shot has been used on focus on Sara expressions and emotions. The desire of fame shown on Sara's face as she is imagining she is on a TV show but the illusion makes her face turned into frightening in the next seconds as she thought her refrigerator come alive. The second time to apply this technique was when Sara visits her doctor. Sara is trying to explain her problem to the doctor but he seems like do not care about it. The fish-eye lens makes Sara looks like very confuse and her world already became distortion but the world apart from her face seems like normal as usual.

The mise-en-scene means 'putting into the scene' / 'staging the scene' which includes the aspects of the film such as lighting, setting, and props, costume and makeup, actor's performance and movement. In my view, the actor with most stunning performance is Ellen Burstyn as Sara Goldfarb. She actually makes me heartbreaking when she tells her upset and loneliness to her son with a smile, a smile which full of sadness. Her emotional stages appeared in this film have a huge contrast as she is looking forward to be on TV but dealing with the 'fridge monster' at the same time. In the end, she drives crazy and accepts the therapy from the hospital which is very reasonable and convincing. On top of that, makeup plays an important role to enhance the appearance of the actors. The makeup on Harry's infection arm makes me impressive. Especially when Harry tries to inject the drugs on the wound on his arm, this actually makes me got goosebumps.

I strongly believe that many of us can't get rid of this film after watching it. Thanks to Mr. Joe makes us awake as he said that all of the movies are FAKE even it was based on true story. Yup, the story can be true but not the movie itself. I agree that. I learned a new thing from him which is called 'Hollywood realism'. For a simple example: we watch a guy in the movie was killed but in real he is not dead. The Hollywood realism makes us believed that the guy actually been killed.