Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a dream is one of my favorite movies of all time. It bring the issues related to drug and alcohol abuse to light in more of an intense way than movies had done before this. I think that is one of the more interesting aspects of the movie, aside from the whole flick itself; the fact that it was willing to push the envelope in order to get a statement across.

That's the other thing I noticed about this movie: it is very rare nowadays that a movie comes out that has an explicit moral or lesson. When movies like Superbad/Pineapple Express/Tropic Thunder are some of the biggest and most popular films it seems like the audience wants fewer and fewer lessons to be preached at them through their method of big screen entertainment, and more and more random laughs.

While I did enjoy the hell out of those movies, it really is kind of refreshing to get hit with a healthy dose of "here's something to take away from watching this" without having to resort to "survivorman" or "dirty jobs". The message in this movie is, to my understanding, do not lose sight of what is important whatever you do. The drugs they use throughout the movie do nothing other than provide a new focus for these peoples' lives to go on, or they make it so the people get so dependent that they can't even experience what they want to experience without the assistance of medication. Do not lose sight of what is important in life, and live every moment like it's your last. That's what I got from this movie anyway.

It's weird, but before I took this class I would not have thought that the utter abuse of alcohol and drugs could even get to the extent that the movie depicted; after reading about some of the things people have done, though, and after watching and talking about some of the things we've gone over in class my eyes have been opened, so to speak. The fact that people can get to that extent is now definitely something I'm more adjusted to, even though I haven't necessarily experienced it myself.