When was requiem for a dream made

The only thing I can seek is a different kind of love, a healthy kind of love. In the same vein as Tyrone, Marion seeks the acceptance she can't find in herself.

At first, Harry, who provides both drugs and affection, seems like enough. But as fall and winter descend, so does Marion. While summer was full of great times with Harry, creativity with her designs, money, and hope for the future, by winter, Marion is left alone, addicted, and broke. Willing to do anything for her fix, she gives herself up to a world of prostitution. There are a number of scenes in which Marion is looking at herself in the mirror, normally before she spirals deeper into her addiction by way of her actions with other men.

These moments are symbolic of the internalization of judgment Marion feels from those around her. She mentions her detached parents, and we see the corrupt relationship she has with her therapist, another caretaker who hurts her instead of helping her. Harry goes to Florida in hopes of scoring more dope, and when Harry is imprisoned, the last bastion of dignity Marion held onto is gone.

We last see her curled up with a sack of heroin, having completely lost herself to her drug addiction instead of finding the validation she craves. Sara Goldfarb has the most heartbreaking existence of the four even when summer begins. A widow with a junkie son, Sara's only constant companions are daytime television and her neighborhood acquaintances.

She receives a glimmer of hope when she receives a scam call that promises an appearance on TV. Now with something to look forward to, she believes that being on the show and fitting into her old red dress will bring her happiness again. She's reminded of a time when her husband was alive and when she looked youthful. The lack of safety manifests differently for all of the characters and is expressed in different ways through different vices and specific addictions. I just tried to focus mostly on that sense of something missing.

A lot of people can relate to that feeling. Jared is the opposite of me. Jared is super-method. He stays in it the entire time. Not everybody gets skinny, not everybody gets emaciated. Aronofsky: I was just Jewish mothering [Leto], and trying to constantly feed him, just because I wanted him to have the energy to get through it.

But he was healthy and young, and it must help create a space for him to feel free to do what he has to do. Matthew Libatique, director of photography: Marlon would literally be in the heaviest scene, and then cut and tell a joke.

Whereas Jared and Jennifer really, it was harder for them. They had to interact with each other and deal with themselves. Connelly: Our working relationship was good. It was at times slightly volatile — which I think was part of our characters and what they were going through at the time.

It was sort of conveniently volatile during the volatile scenes, which was probably more of a reflection of our youth. Watson: They approached acting from a different place. Jennifer was a classically trained film actress, and she really hit her stride around take five, six and seven. Jared, he had had a lot more background in television, he hit his stride around take one, two, and three. And so trying to find that magical take four was all the thing we were doing.

We shot it twice. Emotionally, Jared was really there between takes one and five, and Jennifer was better later. Because the actors needed a certain amount of time to be prepared for where they had to go. Connelly: My son, Kai, was a baby at that time, and so I had him with me on set. He was with me every day. I was still nursing him.

It was the beginning of having to learn to surrender to the moment and not hold on to something. In Requiem she plays Sara Goldfarb, an isolated widow whose cheery front masks depression, and who starts having amphetamine-induced hallucinations in her apartment.

Burstyn performed solo or played against the television and a growling fridge as often as she did another cast member. Aronofsky : I was terribly intimidated by Ellen. The first day bringing her out to Coney Island and the boardwalk and Brighton Beach — I remember I had a camera with me and I was scared to take pictures of her, even though I was about to shoot a movie on her.

When Darren shot Pi , his mother was the caterer. Seeing them and talking to them, I always wonder what the world would be like if everybody got to grow up with parents like that. She did have that Brooklyn accent, which was very helpful to me. I came in and talked to her every day so I could take up her intonation. She was my coach. Watson: [Burstyn] was incredibly generous with teaching us.

Probably the most generous with Darren, and trusting of him. And I think that was a two-way street for them.

Burstyn: The first thing was adding a neck piece that was glued on me and that turned out to be a nightmare because during the day, my body swallowed the glue.

It was very hard to get off. I wore two fat suits — 40 pounds, maybe, the first one, and 20 pounds, the second one. Then we came to a ten-day break for me where Darren was shooting other things, so I was able to lose 10 more pounds.

I went on this cabbage-soup diet, which is very effective for losing weight, but you eat nothing but cabbage soup three times a day. Aronofsky: For me, probably the reason I made the movie, was for that scene [where Harry goes to visit Sara].

It broke my heart every time I read it. I knew that that was the center of the film — if it was a seesaw, this was the fulcrum.

Libatique: That scene was difficult to shoot because — whose scene is it? Leto: It was my first day and my first scene, I believe, with any dialogue. I was maybe overprepared at that point, just raring and ready to go. We had to shoot my side on another day. But I remember Ellen being so believable — her creative force swept me up into this really interesting place where I felt I was there with my mother and we were really having this conversation. He was a tender young actor, which made him easy to love.

We all sat there in awe watching her do a take, and we were all teary-eyed at the end. And Matty, it turns out, had fogged up the viewfinder because he was crying, and when it came back, the shot was just the tiniest bit soft. Jay Rabinowitz, editing : There were other takes where she was brilliant but this, there was something so special.

We really never could imagine going with another take. This is something that you come across in editing — you have to make these decisions between technical perfection and magic.

Aronofsky: I was devastated. And how many chances does she have to do something? Make her mark. One of the things I loved about Requiem is that I have to deal with four points of views as opposed to one. That started a visual grammar and different techniques that we decided to move throughout the film.

Connelly: I was so impressed by Matty and the way he worked. It was a totally different style of filmmaking than I had experienced. I had never done anything like that before. Libatique: It was basically just a weight belt and a monopod stuck out. The effect was great and it spoke to another layer of subjectivity to get to.

That was the crux of the design angle on that movie and he was really excited about it. But I had not pitched on a movie before, so I had no visuals or anything. She basically had to do it in one take — we had to choreograph everything she did.

Burstyn: And there was no rest. It was just, do it and do it at top speed. That was very challenging. There were a lot of different technical things going on that I had never experienced before. I was panting by the time we finished. I remember him sending me a clip of the scene where Ellen Burstyn first takes the speed pills. We realized at that point we were in trouble. I had written a lot of stuff in advance, but in this hip-hopish vein.

When I started seeing the rough edit, we put the music to it, and nothing really latched on. Libatique: [Darren] came up with this idea of what would be called hip-hop montages, because of the beats that we cut them to.

We came right on the heels of the height of MTV. As much as the quick cutting has been disparaged as time has gone on, in those small bits, it worked to convey imagery quickly. It happens in a montage, then, you see the aftermath. Aronofsky: We even used it sometimes when [Sara] would check the mailbox. In the same way that we all check our mailboxes on our iPhones now for a little hit of dopamine.

Rabinowitz: So much of what everybody loves about the editing of Requiem for a Dream was baked into the script. The first time there was one of those micro and macro image montages, he explains what each shot is. BOOM, she pops one into the palm of her hand. And the second time he did it, he explained a lot less in the script. Watson: The trap of a heroin movie is, you see people shooting up, right? Chinlund: It was important that we show these people as people with lives and creative output.

Marion and her loft and all her dreams of a career in fashion, and Tyrone was a DJ and we had installed DJ equipment in his loft. It was a story about people and how easy it is for them to get derailed.

It was the responsibility of the sets to show the optimism, the potential of these characters against the darkness of the path it followed. I knew it had to be intense, and I knew by breaking the hip-hop montage for the first time on the actual insertion, and showing that to the audience, I was making a big statement. The film sends all four of its main characters spiraling into despair as it builds toward its climax, but the most scarring sequence in the finale has to be the one in which Marion, desperate for a fix, shows up at what turns out to be a sex show for a crowd of hollering, bill-throwing men in suits.

Watson: We basically shot [the sex show scene] in the very last night. We had a closed set. We had a lot of rules and regulations going into that.

Quick cuts also highlight the inherent tragedy of the film, embedded within its very title: This characters will never be allowed to achieve their dreams. They will always be separated from them, their desires always cruelly snatched from their fingertips before they can truly touch — hence, quick cuts to avoid us and them getting too attached.

Aronofsky takes this one step further by his numerous usage of split-screens, where our frame is divided into multiple frames with different actions going on. Or in the case of Requiem , sometimes the exact same action. Our very first scene separates Leto and Burstyn not only within the physical realm via Burstyn hiding in a closet, but with this usage of split-screen to exacerbate their emotional separation.

Even the previously mentioned love scene between Leto and Connelly occurs in split-screen; despite the two characters being on the same bed, they must reach through the split-screen to reach each other. A particularly effective piece of foreshadowing, of Greek tragedy regarding our characters' fates — even when they reach through the limitations of their own filmmaking, there will always be a split preventing them from getting what they need.

There are so many other marvelous things about Requiem 's filmmaking to point out, but hopefully this gives you a primer that can assist you going down the rabbit hole yourself.

Addiction, an inherently psychological state of being, has many physical manifestations. Filmmaking, in some ways, is a physical manifestation of an inherently psychological states of being; how can we make a tangible object that represents our intangible human condition?

By using every physical filmmaking tactic at his disposal and thensome, Darren Aronofsky shows us exactly how to turn the psychological into the physical, not just with the ramifications of addiction, but with any human experience you wish to apply his strategies too.

Requiem for a Dream may mourn its characters' dreams, but it still serves to spark mine. Requiem for a Dream is available on a 20th Anniversary 4K Blu-ray set starting today. For more on Aronofsky, here's our ranking of his films. Gregory Lawrence aka Greg Smith is a writer, director, performer, songwriter, and comedian.

He loves pizza and the Mortal Kombat movie. For more, www. Image via Artisan Entertainment. Share Share Tweet Email.

Gregory Lawrence Articles Published. Read Next in movies. First 'Tick, Tick