No movie has produced such a visceral reaction in me than “Requiem for a dream”. By the end of it, I was ugly crying, sobbing, in the living room. Why did it shake me to my core? And how on Earth did this start with the movie “White Chicks?”
I went to see the movie White Chicks in the theaters with my Mom, and on the way home she casually mentioned that Marlon Wayans had done a dramatic role once- and I should check it out, because he was really good in it. For whatever reason, we found “Requiem for a dream” on TV and watched it right away (was it a Saturday? Was it the summer? Why did we have all the time in the world?). I was horrified by the lengths that the characters in the movie- played alternately by Marlon Wayans, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Ellen Burstyn- went to to get their next drug high. In two hours, addiction takes over their lives, and we see as they lose their selfhood in the pursuit of the next hit. I see Marlon Wayans working on a chain gang in the South, the lower half of his arm missing (I don’t remember why. Wasted away with too much heroin use?). I see Jennifer Connolly getting dollar bills thrown in her face as men yell “Ass to Ass!”, and she furiously pumps away. And the saddest scene of all, the friends of Ellen Burstyn’s character, embracing each other on a bench, consoling each other as they sob, mourning the loss of their friend, still alive but ravaged by too many electroshock treatments.
And in between it all, the hiss and gurgle of blue water trickling and the drug (heroin?) hissing as it cooks on a spoon. This is all what lingers from “Requiem for a Dream”. There are no ghosts or corpses, but it is still the scariest movie I can think. I haven’t watched it more than once, and I don’t think I could.
The Lebanexican 
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