| Author | Message | ||
     Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
I saw this on BBC2 the other night. First time I've seen it. Did Ellen Burstyn win anything for that performance? She was fantastically good. Possibly one of the best performances I've seen in a film for the last decade. Also, did they use clever padding and effects or did she genuinely lose weight? The performance was so convincng I couldn't tell which. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I think it was padding, mate. She was nominated for an Oscar, but don't think she won it. Might have won a Golden Globe, though. Great performance; genuinely disturbing film. the ending's a real punch in the face. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.171.18 |
It's a real date movie that one. | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 78.147.148.35 |
I love that film, but haven't watched it in four or five years. I'll have to dig it out again now... | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 78.147.148.35 |
Anyone seen The Fountain? I keep almost buying it, because I liked Pi and Requiem For A Dream so much, but its reviews were so universally terrible... (And it's never been quite cheap enough.) | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
I loved it when I saw it on telly a while back. I can see why people wouldn't like it though. It would be very easy to accuse it of being pretentious. I prefer to call it intelligent filmmaking instead. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I thought The Fountain was brilliant. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 147.252.230.141 |
I thought the whole filme was padding. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. We get it. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. Drugs are bad. Telly is a drug too. | ||
| Nathaniel Tapley (Natt) Username: Natt Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 78.147.148.35 |
I'm pretty sure every film is 90% padding on that scale: Citizen Kane: Money doesn't bring happiness. Money doesn't bring happiness. Money doesn't bring happiness. Rosebud's a sledge. Gremlins: Don't meddle with ancient Oriental proto-deities. Oooh! Special effects! Don't meddle with ancient Oriental proto-deities. Oooh! Special effects! Jaws: Shark. Shark. Shark. Shark. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Romeo & Juliet Aww isn't love nice family feuds are bad aww isn't love nice killing your girlfriend's family is bad aww isn't love tragic Funny games Violence is bad you're responsible | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.229.193 |
The Simpsons did a funny parody of the drug-taking jump-cuts in REQUIEM, I remember. I didn't think it pretentious, but though I thought it amazing, I don't know if I could really ever see it again.... Oddly, I probably could see THE FOUNTAIN again. | ||
| Jonathan (Jonathan) Username: Jonathan Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.109.171.18 |
I loved The Fountain too. A very moving film about dying. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
I'm with Proto on this one. Probably the idea that drugs are bad/diet pills=television=drugs was terribly original when Selby wrote the novel back in the 70s, but in the modern era these ideas are rather cliche. It's true that Aronofsky tricked out his story with some compelling camera moves, but that wasn't enough for me, I'm afraid. I haven't seen THE FOUNTAIN or THE WRESTLER. At least in the case of the latter Aronofsky appears to have dropped the fancy camera tricks in lieu of actual story and characterization. A move in the right direction, I think. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
I thought the camera tricks served to make the story more compulsive. It really seemed to put me in the character's heads. Always a neat trick from a filmmaker. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.204.111.196 |
Requiem For A Dream has been ruined by Sky Sports and Britain's Got Talent. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 88.202.206.180 |
I've always loved Requiem for a Dream. Its main strength lies in its powerhouse performances. Ellen Burstyn is absolutely stunning and the film's finale (particularly Jennifer Connolly's fate) is a mini horror film. I've never seen it as a film with a "message" or an agenda. Of course Drugs Are Bad - we all know that. But that's hardly the point of the story. And I saw The Fountain a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it. I was bemused by all the reviews that called it incomprehensible. It made perfect sense and wasn't at all pretentious. A truly powerful love story. The last time I cried that hard was when I saw Let The Right One In. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.56.196 |
"Of course Drugs Are Bad - we all know that. But that's hardly the point of the story." Which is? | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
The human tragedy of the 4 main characters. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
For heaven's sake... The film is a very good adaptation of a great novel, and summing up its theme as 'Drugs are bad' doesn't get close to the corrosive satirical edge of Selby's writing. The book deals with the parallels between prescribed and non-prescribed drugs, with the exploitative nature of the American healthcare system, with the dehumanisation of addicts by police and health workers alike... These are crucial issues that may not be 'original' but are still poorly appreciated and still acutely relevant. What matters in the book, and in the film, is not what effects the drugs have but how their use is controlled by exploiters. Selby makes no moral distinction between 'legal' and 'illegal' drugs. He is concerned with the nature of exploitation under free-market capitalism. And he's writing as a (non-comic) satirist and polemicist, not as a social realist. Why do you think the book is called Requiem For a Dream? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Joel - have you read much of Selby's other work? He wrote a novel called DEMON that is particularly brilliant. He's a very good writer I often feel I should read more of. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.23.22 |
Fountain was lovely. Really beautifully realised worlds and atmospheres. My favourite sci fi of recent years. I think Aronofsky films scrutinize simple themes, take a magnifying glass to them. That said, I've only seen The Fountain. | ||
| Weber_gregston (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.56 |
Probably best you avoid RFAD unless you want something truly downbeat to watch. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
In my view, the story and characterizations in the film were weak, but that's hardly Requiem's only sin. The film introduces a handful of stereotypes, uses camera tricks to make equivalent a variety of "addictions," and then proceeds to slowly and systematically withdraw all hope from each of the characters' lives. Eventually the characters' situations become so dire, so exaggerated, they become almost comical -- reductio ad absurdum. If plot is minimalist (and absurd), if characterizations are shallow, and if theme is the only intensifying facet of the film, then it's easy, I'd say, for viewers to be left only with the underlying moral: Drugs are bad. Drugs are bad. Drugs are bad. And if this isn't a cliche, I don't know what one is. The film uses stereotypes, as I said -- but it has the additional problem of using anachronistic stereotypes. Burstyn's housewife character, for instance, is a 70s staple -- a character one step away from Edith Bunker. The idea that junkies are essentially zombies without substance is a very 70s cliche. The idea of being addicted to a game show is so 70s it hurts. Housewives, junkies, and (to a certain extent) game shows still exist in America in the twenty-first century, but they don't exist in the way that Selby portrayed them in the 70s. Aronofsky should have set the film in the 70s if he wanted to be credible. Joel, you say Selby was a satirist and a polemicist, although I've never heard him referred to in that way. As a satirist, he wasn't funny or witty; as a polemicist, he attacked only obvious human failings. A junkie, Selby lived the seedy life he wrote about. He was poorly educated. I see no reason to believe his work has any element of satire about it. It seems more likely he was just writing about what he knew -- although it's entirely likely he also chose sensationalistic fare for the attention it got him. After all, probably no one would now know his name if LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN hadn't gained notoriety for obscenity. (It was banned in some countries, prosecuted for obscenity in others.) I should mention I've never read Selby's book, so I can't judge it; my criticisms apply only to the film. And although I didn't like it, Aronofsky's film has some fine performances. If you bought into the characters as more than stereotypes, probably you got more out of the movie than I did. One thing I'd like to mention: Pop Will Eat Itself's Clint Mansell did the soundtrack, and his work in the film, particularly in the quick-cut crescendo at the end, is terrific. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.157.23.22 |
Thing is Weber, I can be quite invigorated by downbeat movies if they're well crafted. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I assumed RFAD was set in the 1970s...it certainly looked it. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.249.39 |
REQUIEM is a movie that is much more about style over substance, but for once, that isn't a bad thing - the gorgeous look and weight of this film is what you're left with, and its gorgeous even at its most squalid. The "clichés" didn't bother me, because I took them as conventions - I guess one man's cliché, Chris, is another man's convention. A good companion film to RFAD is the remarkable SPUN (2002) - which has equally unbelievable caricatures of reality - it's much more a comedy (pitch-black as it is) - and gives us a Mickey Rourke character (The Cook) that should have garnered a supporting Oscar win, at least over his later, certainly cliché-bound/sentimental-choked THE WRESTLER role.... | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
>> I assumed RFAD was set in the 1970s...it certainly looked it. You know, perhaps it was. It's hard to say. In America, thrift-shop clothes are often 70s hand-me-downs, so contemporary junkies would perhaps look like refugees from the 70s. But Marlon Wayans haircut is decidedly twenty-first century. The strip-club at the end of the film looks very twenty-first century. I can't recall what sorts of cars appear in the film -- are they contemporary or not? At the very least, however, Aronofsky should have cleared up the ambiguity. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Isn't every car in America a model from the 1970s?  It sems to me that Aronofsky left the era deliberately vague - a stylistic device. That's my take on it. | ||
| Chris_morris (Chris_morris) Username: Chris_morris Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 12.165.240.116 |
Probably you're right, Zed. Although, in my view, the characters are frozen in the 1970s, and the story isn't as timeless as Aronofsky suggests. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
It's a sort of modern parable, though, isn't it? that's how I viewed it. The characters are stuck inside shells they did not create; they act how they are told to act, how society has moulded them. Again, this was just my reading. He's a clever director - I just saw all this as being deliberate. And Craig - to me, The Wrestler (and Rourke's barnstorming performance) was almost anti-cliche. certainly it was anti-sentiment. A brilliant, brilliant film. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.249.39 |
I think, Zed, THE WRESTLER is a movie where to me, all the conventions were clichés - the reverse of my experience with RFAD. I particularly disliked Marisa Tomei in WRESTLER, who I found just loathsomely clichéd. THE WRESTLER was almost a "Saturday Night Live"-ish parody of its own genre - in that respect, perhaps, one could say it was anti-sentimental/cliché. But taken seriously?... How could it be anti-anything, taken purely at face-value?... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Horses for courses, baby - that's what I took from the film. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.52.159 |
My comments are about the film, Joel, and you may be right in saying that there are a few different messages in there, but those few ideas are made repeatedly, and without grace. It's like watching a clockwork machine slowly plane slices off a trapped rat. Add passive characters to the mix and it's a dull, sadistic experience. I think Gary Fry quoted someone saying that no piece of art, no matter how sad, is ever depressing. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.240.106 |
Again, it's horses for courses, Proto. I don't get any of that from the film. Now, where's me heroin stash? Oh, there it is, up Jennifer Connolly's arse.  |