Character Case Analysis- Requiem for a Dream

Character Case Analysis- Requiem for a Dream

The film Requiem for a Dream by Darren Aronofsky is an accurate portrayal of addiction. Aronofsky depicts the mental states of addicts in this generational film. The themes are intertwined with the lives of contemporary youths in the aspects of drugs, media, and sex. The director applies remarkable visual and aural styles that make us sink into a fictional world, allowing us to feel the highs and lows of the characters in their adventures.

Requiem employs subjective storytelling, where each character’s story is well depicted independently. The story is based in Brooklyn, narrating the lives of four interconnected individuals with unique addictions. In the opening scene, we are first introduced to Sara Goldfarb, a retired, lonely, and TV addict. Sara is overweight and blowzy woman whom we gather spends most of her time watching television. She is also a sugar addict. Sara’s son Harold unremorsefully sells her TV in a local pawn shop, and anything in his mother’s house qualifies as a source of funds to his heroin addiction. Harold’s girlfriend Marion is cocaine crazed, and his best friend Tyrone is dreaming of being a big drug dealer.

Sara watches a particular TV show religiously and becomes delusional on being a guest on the show. A man calls her and discusses the possibility of featuring in the show, a dream come true for Sara. She becomes ecstatic, and the idea of improving her appearance filters into her mind. At first, the idea is good as she is resolute to ignore her compulsive need for sugary foods and gets into a diet. The diet plan does not work, and she opts to visit a doctor who prescribes her diet pills. It is not long after that she gets addicted to the pills.

Harold is a university graduate but uses drugs with his girlfriend Marion and longtime friend Tyrone. In the beginning, the use of drugs is for entertainment, a temporary escape from reality. Within their drug-centric world, Tyrone comes up with a mercantile vision of being big-time drug dealers. This venture, however, quickly spirals down as they start using much of their products. Consequently, selling becomes an after-thought, and they sink deeper into drug addiction.

The setting in Brooklyn is essential to portray the ease of accessing drugs; diet pills, heroin, and cocaine.  Each character has big dreams, but their over-indulgence in addictive behaviors causes their aspirations to succumb. The evolution of each character is regressive, a great depiction of life in drugs and addiction. Requiem of dreams also brings out the definition of addiction in both aspects of substance abuse and behavioral addiction. All these behaviors result from the conquest of happiness, which, unfortunately, ends in grim fate for each character. Aronofsky also clearly puts it out that addiction can affect people of all ages and different backgrounds.

Addiction, in a simple definition, is a compulsive pursuit for a reward. Most content we get from movies is based on drug-abuse, but Aronofsky does his viewers well by bringing about behavioral addiction. In modern society, activities such as shopping, sex, gambling, gaming, the internet, and watching are commonly abused. In this film, Sara’s deep addiction to television acts as a gateway drug. It is her exposure to television contents that she falls into using diet pills.  Sara fascinates appearing in the TV show with a red dress she wore during Harold’s high school graduation. At her age and after years of obsession with sugar, unfortunately, diet did not work. Her actual life is inseparable from the media content she’s been consuming. She has been dreaming of appearing in a show and probably, with a particular idea of how she should present herself on air. The red dress is a contrast of Sara’s life, a dull, isolated life.

The reward from Sara’s addiction to watching TV is an escape to a world away from the suffocating anonymity of existence in her aging self. Like most addictions, people enter into certain activities to cover their inner despair and anguish. After the phone call, Sara broke the news to Harold that millions of people were going to see her and like her. This scene was a clear indication of her need for people’s approval. The film also portrays her infatuation with food. A scene is seen where Sara caresses a box of chocolates, and her face lightens up with amusement as it melts in her mouth.  We are also shown how she fought her desire for comfort food when she was on dietetic meals. Her inner conflict was so intense that, together with her mental hunger to lose weight, she resolves to find help from a dietitian.

Science has diagnosed addiction as a brain disorder. This revelation can be supported by Sara’s trait of mental inability to take control of her desires. Previously, she had self-control issues with food and watching television. Her unceasing efforts to recover her TV whenever his son sells it shows her mental inability to stop her addiction. Upon being introduced to diet pills, her will is again tested and ends up abusing the drugs when she feels they are not working.

Substance abuse is another type of addiction well depicted in Requiem of Dreams. All the significant characters are into substance abuse, but the issue of hard drugs is illustrated by Harold, Marion, and Tyrone. The movie captures the compulsive nature of drug addiction and the repercussion associated with addiction. From the start, we see the extents addicts can go to quench their desires. Taking Harold’s, for example, he is a bright young man. His option for drugs as a means of entertainment is what leads him to the problems thereafter. Marion, a creative and artistic individual, deteriorates into prostitution for heroin fixes. Lastly, flashbacks from Tyrone’s childhood contrast his innocence from his present way of life.

The film shows us the euphoric effect and sense of elation the characters are in upon intake of the hard drugs. This depiction is accurate on the psychological impact most substances have on the consumer. In the event, people are stressed, or as a means of fun, they may opt to dive into the hassled reality drugs create. This reward becomes a need when a drug user begins relying too much on that virtual reality, thus resulting in abuse of the drug. Also, medications can offer a sense of empowerment to users and a pathway to realizing dreams. It is during their drug session that Tyrone comes up with the grand plan of trafficking drugs. Drugs and goals for these characters, including Sara, are intertwined, where each holds on to the use of a substance to realize their ambitions.

The downward spiral of the characters is a clear illustration of people’s deterioration in the claws of addiction. Initially, in the case of Sara, the pills help her considerably in losing weight. Her overdependence on the medicines, however, results in her having adverse effects of hallucinations and paranoia. The three friends’ drug trafficking business had also initially boomed, and everything was going as planned. Unfortunately, unforeseen events cause the business to collapse quickly. This storyline is symbolic of the life of addictions. Drug intake presents an instant euphoric effect that is usually short-lived when reality kicks in to find yourself rock-bottom.

Analyzing this movie incites me to argue that Aronofsky was trying to explain that addiction, apart from biochemical substances and behaviors, can be of intangible ideas like dreams. Addictions are a result of underlying issues, disregarding the common assumption people enter into certain routines in search of pleasure. This concept challenges the contemporary therapeutic interventions for addicts. The focus needs to move from what causes the addiction, factors that induce the behaviors, but into identifying the primary cause of the habit.

What Requiem of Dreams was trying to explain is that all addictions are the same. The underlying reason is universal that human beings enter into activities of habit to escape their crude reality. In their utopia, addicts can create their desired world and have an unwavering belief in their dreams. The hard truth, however, is that these are pipedreams that individuals tend to use anything to fill, be it television or drugs. As long as one is fixated in that one hollow dream, they will live trying to fill the hole daily. A habit is developed and ultimately devours its victims. The consequences of addictions can be as gruesome as in the ending of Aronofsky’s film. Sara ends up as a psychotic patient, Harold had his hand amputated after a needle infection, Tyrone in prison, and Marion as a prostitute to cater for her drug addiction.

With all that said, it is not all doom for addicts. Various therapeutic interventions can be adopted to help patients. Different community support groups and clinical-based programs exist for each type of addiction. Requiem of Dreams does not necessarily call for a complete change in the approach of therapy for addicts, but rather a multi-dimensional approach that incorporates to understand the root cause of addiction.

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