(no subject)

[wickedflea]

I hated Requiem for a Dream. I thought it was overblown and ridiculous. It was visually stunning, of course, but I still gave it a solid thumbs down. But I know a lot of people liked it. So convince me.

Comments

[alm35.livejournal.com]

*spoilers*

I agree completely. When you get right down to it, the message was about as cliched as you can get: "Drugs are bad, mmkay?" It's like Reefer Madness for the 21st century.

And plotwise it was ridiculously predictable. I'd been told in advance that the movie was "extremely disturbing," so all I needed to do was imagine the worst possible thing that could happen to each character and I had the ending pegged. The mom gets spaced out on diet pills? Yep. she's gonna end up in a mental institution, getting electroshock treatments that are played for maximum horror value. The hot chick is obviously going to end up as a whore -- I mean, duh, she's a hot chick, what else is she going to do? The junkie finds a weird sore on his arm partway through the movie? Yep, a bloody amputation scene is on the way.

A lot is said about the visual style of the movie. It's definitely distinctive, but I found it annoying as hell.

So no, you're not the only one.

[luftwaffe.livejournal.com]

Although I know there's no point in arguing, I can't resist asking: Would the movie have resonated better if Jennifer Connolley had been elected America's first female President, but then failed to get any legislation through the all-male Congress; Jared Leto had been abducted by aliens and forced to mine ore on a desolate moon; Marlon Wayans had joined the circus but been disillusioned after meeting the freaks; and Ellen Burstyn had become a famous pianist but then lost her hands in a boating accident?
That is to say, the predictability didn't bother me, because a certain sort of person is realistically in danger of meeting a certain sort of fate. ie, if you're a hot chick desperate to score junk all the time, seeing the prostitution coming won't necessarily stop it from coming.

[alm35.livejournal.com]

On reflection, I suppose what bothered me about that film wasn't so much the predictablity of the characters' fates (because I agree, the lifestyles they were leading made such fates likely.) What bothered me was that the filmmakers deliberately played up these fates, making them seem as horrific as possible. Which yeah, was a deliberate choice, and was in keeping with their aims in making the film. I didn't like how it was handled, but I realize that this opinion is subjective and that many others thought it worked wonderfully.

I do think that the narrative arc of the film is well-constructed -- it's a well-told story; I just have issues with the way in which the shock value of certain events was exploited.