Requiem for A Dream's Movie Review

(Requiem for A Dream, 2000)

I have not seen this movie before my lecturer let us watch this movie, named 'Requiem for A Dream'. When the movie had started to play, at first I thought it was an horror movie, but after a few minutes later, I recognized it was not an horror movie but a movie that describes about drug addiction.

Synopsis:
The story starts with Sara Goldfarb's television set was took away by her son, Harry to exchange for money. Harry, Tyrone and Marion were drug addicts, in order to support themselves they decided to enter the drug trade. Meanwhile, Sara got a call that said she had won the prize and was able to get on television. From then on, she was obsessed to lose her weight for the purpose of wearing the red dress. After all the incidents,  they finally meet their own tragic ending.

The scene that I like the most:

There are two related scene that I think it was the most touching part in the movie, but not I like the most. The scene describes that Harry went back to visit Sara and wanted to tell her that he had bought a new television set for her. While he was about to tell Sara about he had bought her a brand new television set, Sara had interrupted him for a few time and this cause Harry felt that his mother was weird that day. After Harry told Sara the purpose of why he came back home, he heard his mother was grinding her teeth. Then Harry started to ask Sara, she told him that after taking the green pill that gave by the doctor the grinding sound will be disappear. Now Harry knew that Sara was addicted to the pills too, he told his mother to stop taking pills and told his mother that taking pills was no good for her. Sara then argued that there is a reason why she was taking the pills and she felt more happy. Harry felt helpless and later he was crying when he was on his way back to the apartment.

When Harry was walking down from the cab, it was a long shot, but when he had completely walked down from the cab, the camera shot move from long shot to close up shot, it is to tell us that Sara had recognized that was Harry. After telling us that Sara recognized him, then the shot become medium close up to show us that how happy Sara was. This scenes said that how happy a mother saw her son come back to visit her.

Then when both of them were in Sara's apartment, most of the shot are medium close up shot to show the facial expression of the actors and often change to medium long shot to show Sara moving back and forth between the dining table and the kitchen. When Harry found out that Sara was on diet by having diet pills, he told her not to take the diet pills as he knew she had addicted to it.

When Harry said that he needed to leave, the camera shot become medium long shot to show the body movement of Harry and Sara. Harry hugged his mother and then left the apartment, while Sara remained standing and putting her arm on a chair. The hand that Sara's arm putting on the chair shows the feeling of Sara. When Harry still in the apartment, Sara's hand was like holding a fist, but when Harry was out of Sara's sight, her hand became powerless. It shows that Sara was still happy when her son visited her, but after her son left she felt lonely again.

The scene then cut to Harry was in a cab going to Manhattan, it was a medium close up shot. At first, he felt sad after visiting his mother due to she did not want to listen his advice that she will still having the diet pills and she said that she was lonely. Then the scene became the shots of having the meanings that he injected drugs into himself, then Harry became emotionless.


The scene that I dislike the most:

The scene that I dislike the most is when Tyrone and his girlfriend were having sexual intercourse. This scene looks like even if the movie does not have this scene will also be indifferent. This scene is actually related to the scene that Tyrone was opening and closing the mirror repeatedly as behind the mirror has the money that Tyrone and Harry saved. While Tyrone was opening and closing the mirror repeatedly, his girlfriend was lying on the bed naked and was calling him. From this scene, we already can know what they wanted to do next.

Besides, the scene i dislike the most is because of the way of presenting this scene. The scene was shot by whirling the camera from above to show both Tyrone and his girlfriend whole body. The whirling camera shot makes me feel dizzy and disgust as the scene keeps whirling.

Just to share:

In this movie, the director had used the method of soviet montage. The method of soviet montage is to shoot the shots separately and then combine them in the sequence that you want your audience to know what is the meaning of having those shots. There are some shot that using mouth to open something, cells become bigger, using a lighter, water boiling, water was sucked into the syringe, pupils enlarged, something dropped into a can of water, water was sucked into a cotton, water injected out from the syringe and the cells moving in the veins. All of this shot added together in this sequence let us know that they were injecting drug into themselves.

This method is used frequently in this movie as there are many scenes that show they were having drugs. This method also had used when presenting Sara was having the diet pills and having coffee.

There are also many scenes that are using the method of accelerated montage to accelerate the timeline that used to shoot the scenes. There is a scene that Sara was doing the house chore after she had the diet pill to present that she was too active.
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