Requiem. Noun. An act of remembrance; esp. a memorial song for the deceased.
Dream. Noun. A good time.
“Requiem for a Dream.” Movie. Fate ruins the lives of four addicts over an hour and forty minutes, drawing the viewer in to twist their hearts, souls, and minds. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Scored by Clint Mansell. That last part is what makes this a Music Monday.
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This last Saturday, I decided to wake up, grab Chick-fil-a (as good Christians are required to do, according to Levitical law) and watch a movie that would send paroxysms of emotion, both positive and negative, through my six-foot-seven frame.
I’d heard of “Requiem for a Dream” (referred to as RfaD from here on out) before. Maybe I’m just thinking of Mozart’s piece, which contains “Lacrimosa.” (I only know that because my school required an Arts in Western Civilization class. Joke’s on them, I actually enjoyed the class.) Regardless, I’d never seen this particular Aronofsky before.
Aronofsky somehow remains an obscure name, despite the fact that his films are fairly well known. I saw his first movie, “Pi,” when I was in school. It’s a 1998 B/W movie about this paranoid mathematician, who thinks 3.14 etc. contains the key to the universe or something. To be completely honest, I have no idea what happened in the film. Aronofsky has a knack for writing and directing strange films, and also I was in high school. He has also directed “The Fountain” (2006), “The Wrestler” (2008), “Black Swan” (2010) and “Noah” (2014).
RfaD is his second movie, released in 2000. It stars a very young Jared Leto as Harry Goldfarb, a druggie who sells on the side. He’s not a picky druggie, he’ll go for heroin, coke, or weed, ingesting each to a series of rapid fire camera shots that really captures the frenetic pace of the movie. His mother, Sara Goldfarb, is sort of addicted to dieting. I say sort of, because I don’t really want to spoil anything from this film. She has problems, let’s just stick with that. Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly) is Harry’s girlfriend, who has, believe it or not, just as many problems as Harry or Sara. The last main character is Tyrone C. Love, played by Marlon Wayans. He is a dealer with Harry, and yes, also has a bunch of problems.
When you’re reading about all of these problems with the characters, you might think the movie cliche. Far from it. Aronofsky wrote these characters into the script to not be puppets, sad little humans for the entertainment of the masses, but to be beautiful, broken, striving humans. You get the feeling when you’re watching this movie that any of these people could be you, just give it three bad months. We’ve all had that semester, right?
I don’t know for sure, but I think the aspect that makes this movie work so well, and be so believable, emotional, and profound, is Clint Mansell’s score. This movie was Mansell’s first score, and he hasn’t done too much since. He was on “Black Swan” (2010, Aronofsky again); “Noah” (2014, Aronofsky yet again); “San Junipero,” a “Black Mirror” episode; and “Loving Vincent” (2017), the breathtaking oil-painted film about Van Gogh’s last days. It’s amazing that a relatively inexperienced composer could put something like this soundtrack together.
Haunting. That’s the best word I can use to describe Mansell’s piece: sad in some places, gut-wrenching in others, fun and upbeat, or tinged with deep existential horror. RfaD begins in a decent place. All of these addicts are sort of getting their life together. They aren’t sobering up, but they’re doing a lot better than they were. Mansell can capture this mood in the film with his music, but when things get worse as the film progresses, he is able to do that as well.
The film is divided into three sections: Summer, Fall, and Winter. Listening to the soundtrack by itself (on Spotify below) these three sections are even more recognizable. The three pieces which start these sections off are “Summer Overture,” “Hope Overture,” and “Winter Overture.” Just listening to these three pieces gives you a good idea of the general structure of the film. Things are kinda crappy, they’re getting better, then- sucker punch, life happens really fast.
There’s a series of piano notes in the film that will get inside of you. They’ll burrow deep down, and come out in a whistle while you’re grabbing lunch. Listen to “Tense,” a 37-second song, and be quiet. The piano, then the odd synth, the vague background noise. It all comes together to give the viewer/listener the feeling that they are being watched. “Full Tense” serves as a continuation of this song, and adds even more horror.
As the movie progresses, Mansell’s music becomes more and more dread-inducing. He uses strings, piano and synthetic percussion to fill the hour and forty minutes of the film with a building sense of impending violence. Very rarely does the viewer actually see this violence: Aronofsky likes to cut away from many (alright, maybe just some) of the ‘nastier’ bits of the movie, but Mansell is able to use music to imply these themes through the movie.
There are three songs on the soundtrack that drastically differ from the rest: “Crimin’ and Dealin,’’ “Bialy & Lox Conga,” and “Bugs Got a Devilish Grin Conga.” If you ever dropped acid, then went to a reggae inspired three-ringed circus, I’d imagine these songs would embody that experience pretty well. They are wild: incorporating chanting, fast piano, and instruments that I don’t know that I’ve heard before outside of middle-Eastern marketplace chase scenes in bad, early 2000’s spy thrillers. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just go listen to these songs.
If you were to make the awful decision to only listen to one track from this film, I would recommend you check out “Marion Barfs.” It’s the worst possible title for one of the best songs from the track, which backed the most intense and moving scene, where Marion does indeed barf. It begins with the piano riff (I don’t think riff is the right word, but whatever) and incorporates some beautiful string sections, one at a time. Then, that haunting string piece which repeats throughout the whole film comes in. This time, however, it goes on for longer, getting more complicated, shocking and delighting the viewer, as they watch Marion go through horrors that they can only imagine.
The track that best demonstrates Mansell’s ability to score such a varied and intense movie is “The Beginning of the End.” In it, he captures the vibe of almost every scene of the film. It fluctuates from quick to slow, then back again. Almost all of the instruments in the soundtrack are used in this piece, and the result is a claustrophobic, cacophonous thundering, which begins to suffocate the viewer, in the best way possible. That horrifying LSD-infused reggae circus music comes back in a mother of a way in this piece, both confusing and delighting in how out of place, yet perfect it is for the soundtrack.
The second to last track in the film is “Lux Aeterna,” Latin for “Eternal Light.” It begins with the melancholic piano and gentle strings, but then brings in the violin (honestly, it could be so many different stringed instruments, I’m just guessing) to show off the final scenes of the movie. The final series of Aronofsky’s shots are moving enough without the soundtrack, but when the two work in conjunction with one another, RfaD truly becomes itself, easily becoming one of my favorite films to date.
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Have you ever sat still during the credits of a movie, listening to the soundtrack of a film, grasping at every single note, wanting to take it with you forever, as white names (primarily caucasian actresses/actors, but also the words themselves) trickle up the screen? Have you ever finished a movie, and felt as though you had gone through a war? As if your soul had left you for a moment, gone on vacation for a day or two?
If not, go watch (and listen to) “Requiem for a Dream.” It will change your life, and as Marion puts it, “make [you] feel like a person.”
