November 29, 2000 -- We live in a society where people seek instant gratification, where television dulls the senses and where drugs take the place of love, fulfillment, achievement and happiness. "Requiem for a Dream" takes us deep inside the shattered minds of society's chemically-dependent also-rans. It is one hell of a scary ride.

Writer-director Darren Aronofsky has a gift for movies that make the viewer feel the pain of the people on the screen. His previous film "Pi" is an excellent example depicting pain in such a way as to make the audience squirm. Take that and multiply it by 10 and you have "Requiem for a Dream."

The story follows a group of people seeking a happier state of mind through drugs. At first, it seems to work. Everyone is flying high, but then things fall apart and it just keeps spiraling downward. Ellen Burstyn stars as Sara Goldfarb, a lonely widow who spends most of her time watching television. She gets a call from a man who says she has been selected to be on television. She wants to wear her favorite dress, but needs to lose some weight in order to fit into it. She gets hooked on prescription diet pills, uppers and downers.

Her son, Harry (played by Jared Leto of "The Thin Red Line" and "Fight Club") and his girlfriend, Marion (Jennifer Connelly of "Waking the Dead") slowly get hooked on street drugs, as does Harry's friend, Tyrone (Marlon Wayans of "Scary Movie"). From their brief highs there is a long, ugly spiral down to the black depths of depression and desperation. There are no surprises here. You know what is going to happen from the outset. The director doesn't preach, however, and the visual inventiveness in the film makes the long journey into darkness fascinating rather than some tiresome lecture.

There are interesting and innovative uses of fast-motion photography throughout the film. Slow-motion images and sound are also used to illustrate different mental states. There are also some unusual tracking shots where the camera seems to be attached to the actor somehow so we can see the actor, but the camera moves exactly as the actor moves. There are also a number of split-screen shots in the film. A good portion of the story is told without dialog. The film also uses imaginative dream, daydream, and hallucination sequences, combined with haunting music. This is very effective avant garde filmmaking.

Burstyn gives a towering performance as the lonely, desperate widow. Her pain is terrible to behold, but the madness is worse. There is one horrific sequence where, in a psychotic break, she is stalked by a menacing refrigerator, and characters from television take over her apartment. Leto, Connelly and Wayans also turn in superior performances that range from drug-induced highs to the horrors of withdrawal. Louise Lasser also puts in a telling appearance. At the end, the characters are all bound together in rapidly repeating intercut images, combined with dramatic music to underscore the climax of the film. This is not a pleasant film to watch. It is an extraordinarily inventive and powerful descent into Hell. It rates an A.

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