HEROIN IS FUN

Man on Film by Justin Aclin

              You know what’s fun?  Going to the movies.  You know what’s not fun?  Being a heroin addict.  You know what’s somewhere in the middle?  Watching a movie about heroin addicts.  Such a movie is Requiem for a Dream.

               Requiem for a Dream is a movie that doesn’t come out until November, but I saw it already, making me better than you and everyone else.  (To be fair, the following people also saw it already: Rob, Andy, Melissa, Peter, Mary, and the other Andy.)  Judging from my opening paragraph, you may think that it isn’t any good.  “But Justin,” you’d say, in that condescending voice of yours, “isn’t halfway between seeing a movie and being a heroin addict somewhere around getting kicked in the nards with steel toed boots?  Are you saying that watching Requiem for a Dream is like being kicked in the nards with steel toed boots?”  Yes.  Yes it is.  But in a good way.  Allow me to explain.

               R-FAD (as I’ll be calling it from now on out of sheer, unbridled laziness) is a good movie.  A very good movie.  However, did I like it?  No.  It happens to be a very hard movie to like, in the same way that Schindler’s List is a hard movie to like.  Everyone agrees that Schindler’s List is a good movie, but no one’s likely to arrange weekly viewings of it like it’s the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  It’s just not fun.  Likewise, R-FAD is not fun.  Unless you consider a tale of the utter destruction of the human spirit in a downward spiral of drugs and depravity fun.  And some do.  Witness the success of VH1’s Behind the Music.

              Let me break it down for you (in the explanatory way, not the MC Hammer “whoa-ing” bridge sort of way).  Jared Leto stars as Harry, a junkie.  Marlon Wayans and Jennifer Connelly star as Tyrone and Marian, Harry’s junkie friend and junkie girlfriend, respectively.  And Ellen Burstyn stars as Sara, Harry’s mom who isn’t a junkie yet.  You see, Sara desperately wants to lose weight and gets hooked on diet pills, her own story of addiction mirroring that of Harry’s.  Now, you might think that the story of an old lady hooked on diet pills couldn’t be possibly as depressing as the story of a young, handsome heroin addict.  That’s where you’d be wrong.  EVERYTHING in this movie is depressing. 

            OK, fine, that’s an overgeneralization.  This film is a journey, and there are some non-depressing stops along the way.  However, there’s never any question that the last stop on this train is Badsville.  This film even managed to make a lesbian orgy scene disturbing.  Let me repeat that so you can mull over it.  There was a lesbian orgy in this movie and it was not titillating, but rather disturbing!  Is nothing sacred?  Anyway, everyone in this movie ends up in a pretty crappy place.  And while I felt bad for most of the characters, I had no sympathy for Jared Leto.  That’s what he gets for being so mean to Angela for all those years.  (For an explanation of this cultural reference, please send an SASE to the DFP ASAP.)

            Despite the fact that I just spent several paragraphs describing how R-FAD is an awful movie that no one would ever want to see, (I never said that!  Stop putting words in my mouth, you manipulative SOB.) the movie has a lot going for it, and is in fact, quite good, or, as we say in my neighborhood, “Jazzy-Fresh.”  For one thing, there’s the acting.  The entire cast is extremely Jazzy-Fresh, and especially notable for the fact that they’re playing roles you’re not used to seeing them in.  Marlon Wayans, in particular, gives a performance noteworthy not only because you get to see him doing the freak-nasty, but also because brother Shawn is nowhere in sight.  Not to say that his presence wasn’t missed, of course.  I kept expecting him to show up somewhere.  Anywhere.  Just, knocking on a window and waving or something.  Jennifer Connelly, however, played a highly attractive woman, which isn’t a stretch at all. 

            The other notable thing about this film is its direction, by Pi (the mathematical constant, not the delicious, delicious pastry) director Darren Aronofsky.  Darren ended his last movie by having someone drill a hole in their own head.  I can just picture Darren sitting in his dark room (Darren is definitely the type who sits in a dark room) going, “How can I top that one?”  He does. Anyway, the other thing Darren manages to do is make one of the most visually interesting movies to come along in years.  This movie has roughly five times as many cuts as the average movie.  What does that mean in layman’s terms?  Basically, it looks sweet.  The film you’re most often going to hear it compared to is Fight Club, but the only thing the two movies have in common is stylish visuals.  Well, that, and the fact that Jared Leto doesn’t fare too well in either movie.

            In conclusion, if you’re considering using drugs, I recommend you go to see Requiem for a Dream first.  And then jump in front of the T, because we don’t need you pissing in our gene pool.  Actually, when you walk out of the theatre, there’s no way you’ll still want to do drugs, so you can forget about the whole T bit.  As for the rest of you who aren’t dumb, you should see Requiem for a Dream too.  But only if you have a strong stomach.