You shout at the top of your lungs the name of the woman you love. She’s at the edge of the pier, you at the beginning. The ocean floor is beneath you, and the wood planks that hold you up disappear; you float above the surf, idly, as if the planks were never there. And then you look forward. She’s wearing a red dress, her hair shines, no, radiates in the daylight shooting down from a perfectly circular sun. She turns, her eyes are like jewels, diamonds, the types that men have killed other men to obtain. Poof — she’s gone. You turn around, walk back, the pier ends, you fall off into an abyss, and then wake up in the hospital with an infected arm.
This is one of the most visceral scenes from Requiem for a Dream, a film that horrifies as much as it enlightens. It shows the bare back of the human condition, as well as its greatest gift: love.
Never forget the fact that mankind is capable of escaping its reality. Through the sip of the morning coffee to stymie that aching headache begging you for a few more moments of sleep, to the loneliness clawing from within your chest fighting you to escape. The voices you hear, conversations you engage them in, arguments you never had but wish you did, the inner-monologue you howl to yourself underneath your breath while the entire world passes you by with indifference.
This is Madness. This is life.
Go watch Requiem for a Dream.
Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans, Ellen Burstyn; and Darren Aronofsky, when he was a director and not a producer — gold.
More Later.
