Some movies make you hopeful, some make you think and some make you depressed. This one does a fine job of doing all three.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky (Pi, The Fountain), this is another one of his exercises in low budget film making and boy does he do it well! What hits one more than the ‘plot’ or story is the way it’s shot. Close ups of protagonists and sometimes very graphic images to convey the pain and anguish of addicts.
You could say this is a story of addiction; people addicted to drugs, prescription medication and most imporatantly, hope. Every single one of the characters is addicted to the belief that happiness is just around the corner and they go through hell trying to get there.
Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and Marion (Jennifer Conelly) are drug addicts who will do anything to get some crack. And I mean anyhthing; including selling Harry’s mom’s TV or selling Marion to a king pin fond of kinky sex. Harry loves his mother but cannot show it, Tyrone has ambitions but doesn’t know how to make them true and Marion wants to be a designer but is too addicted to stay focused. The main character in the movie is Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn in her Oscar nominated performance), Harry’s mom who thinks she’s going to appear on a TV show and gets addicted to diet pills in an attempt to tone down and fit into a red dress. She loves her son…way too much and Harry cannot reciprocate it. Things go very very wrong for all of these people.
Like Pi, there are a lot of montages of short shots with an amazing background score by the Kronos quartet and composed by Clint Mansell (Pi). Editing, like Pi is excellent and there are even cameos by some of the actors from Pi including Sean Gullette.
All in all 8.5/10. Brilliant film but may be too painful to watch. Originally rated NC-17.
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