'REQUIEM' DESCENDS INTO ADDICTION WITH OUTSTANDING BURSTYN IN TOW

Junkie movies have an inevitability dictated by their subjects: The
characters experiment, get hooked, have a briefly enjoyable time, increase
their intake, lose control of their lives, descend into criminality and
become slaves to their hungers.

Two possible endings follow: recovery or death.

The sad, stark tale (and I include most alcoholism movies in the genre) has
been told so many times that finding a new approach seems about as easy as
shaking a $100-a-day cocaine habit.

Darren Aronofsky finds one, however, in Requiem for a Dream, a grim but
vibrant film based on a 1978 novel by Hubert Selby Jr., the romantic
nihilist who wrote Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Requiem is the director's follow-up to Pi, a dazzling, low-budget sci-fi
nightmare. In that hyper-metaphoric drama about a crazed mathematician
trying to unlock a numerical code that might counter the chaos of the
universe, Aronofsky used grainy black-and-white images and visual
gymnastics to convey obsession, madness and futility.

The same resourcefulness is on display in Requiem for a Dream but on a more
generous budget. Yet, as in Pi, the tricks are employed in support of the
material.

Harry (Jared Leto) is a standard-issue addict living in the Brighton Beach
section of Brooklyn, in the shadow of the decaying Ferris wheel and roller
coasters of Coney Island.

Harry has a simple method to afford his heroin: He visits the apartment of
his widowed mother, Sara (Ellen Burstyn), and "borrows" her television,
wheeling it on its cart out of her building and down to the pawnbroker, who
pays to take custody of the set until Sara ransoms it a day later.

He shares his highs with his best friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans), and
girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly). He is a spineless sponge, adept at
making excuses for his nowhere life, but, in moments of pharmaceutical
ecstasy, a dreamer of bold ambition.

Harry and Tyrone seek to better themselves by becoming midlevel drug
dealers. Of course, they can't refrain from sampling their wares.

"Just a taste to make sure it's good," they convince each other.

Marion, beautiful and weak, is in such desperate need of comfort and
security that she places too much faith in Harry, falling into addiction
while she thinks she is falling in love.

Little of the triangle's story is unusual, although the earnest actors --
especially Connelly -- and Aronofsky's sympathetic (but not approving)
treatment of them make their familiar self-destruction seem fresh.

The showpiece is the story of Harry's mother: Lonely in her neat-but-drab
apartment, Sara longs to feel important or at least needed. She talks
lovingly of her son, blocking out the realization that he visits only to
take her television for his next fix. When he brags about his new business,
she bursts with pride and relief without pushing him for details.

A phone call tells Sara she has been selected as a possible contestant on a
TV show, suddenly turning her into a celebrity among her widowed neighbors.
She plans to make her appearance in a cherished red dress she hasn't worn
in years.

She tries to lose weight on a diet of grapefruit and fiber, but her hunger
screams for satisfaction. So she visits a doctor who prescribes appetite
suppressants (without once looking at her during a 30-second visit).

Quickly, Sara is losing pounds like a tree in autumn shedding leaves. But
the pills turn her into a nervous obsessive, then begin to lose their
potency, forcing her to increase the dosage.

Heroin and cocaine addicts are common in movies, but an aging widow hooked
on diet pills is new and frightening. Burstyn magnificently plumbs every
dark corner of the junkie's plunge into narcotic hell; in a career filled
with triumphs (The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Alice Doesn't Live Here
Anymore), she gives one of her most affecting performances.

Aronofsky amplifies her state through spectacular filmmaking. In a stunning
sequence, his camera slowly glides through the apartment as Sara darts
about, cleaning it at the speed of the Road Runner racing across the desert.

His techniques -- split screens, slow motion, extreme close-ups, strobe
lighting -- underscore the psychological effect of drugs, the way they
alter perception.

Aronofsky keeps the heat on as the characters descend into hallucinations,
degradation and worse. The film's last quarter is ugly and unrelieved but
not gratuitous, and Aronofsky never loses his resourcefulness; only a
prolonged conversation between Sara and Harry seems conventional,
especially surrounded by such dynamic pacing.

If you've been down this gutter too many times, Requiem for a Dream may not
sound dramatically attractive; aside from Sara's tale, the details are
numbingly familiar and the finale is as unpleasant as possible.

Yet somehow Aronofsky manages to be entertaining as he preaches and
empathetic as he condemns, leaving the tough viewer strangely uplifted by
the ordeal and convinced that any other means would better fill the needs
of the soul.