OST: Requiem for a Dream Album Review

Go to:

OST: Requiem for a Dream by Clint Mansell feat. Kronos Quartet (2000)

Requiem for a Dream (2000)

8.5

SUMMER: Summer Overture / Party / Coney Island Dreaming / Party / Chocolate Charms / Ghosts of Things to Come / Dreams / Tense / Dr. Pill / High on Life / Ghosts / Crimin’ & Dealin’ / Hope Overture / Tense / Bialy & Lox Conga / FALL: Cleaning Apartment / Ghosts-Falling / Dreams / Arnold / Marion Barfs / Supermarket Sweep / Dreams / Sara Goldfarb Has Left the Building / Bugs Got a Devilish Grin Conga / WINTER: Winter Overture / Southern Hospitality / Fear / Full Tense / The Beginning of the End / Ghosts of a Future Lost / Meltdown / Lux Aeterna / Coney Island Low

Watching Requiem for a Dream was one of the scariest experiences of my life. Twice. A relentless downward spiral, based on the novel by NYC novelist Hubert Selby, Jr. (Last Exit to Brooklyn anyone?), the movie is a relentlessly cruel tour de force portraying drug dependence in a way I have never seen before. Spanning about half a year, the movie depicts the fatalistic hell-ride of four drug addicts (three young people and one guy’s mother – played by Ellen Burstyn, whose performance screamed “OSCAR”), from glorious trips to a gruelling outcome only matched by Dante’s depiction of hell in the Divine Comedy and, more recently: Phil Collins' later albums. The most remarkable aspect about it is that director Darren Aronofsky (who previously directed the arty, paranoia nightmare Pi) effectively succeeds in getting under your skin with a seemingly limitless bag of visual tricks, surreal digressions and hyper-kinetic cut ‘n’ paste insanity. I can’t imagine anyone not being impressed by this film, as it messes you up thoroughly. Of course, the reversal of the familiar “from rags to riches”-theme led many people to think of it as yet another moralistic fable. In its own, graphic way, this movie, however, by avoiding to discuss values and morals in an explicit way (probably the reason why so many people were offended by its nihilism), makes you feel like a participant.

A movie like Requiem warrants a memorable soundtrack, and Clint Mansell (former vocalist of underestimated electro-rock band Pop Will Eat Itself – remember their small hit “Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina?”) delivers exactly that, with the aid of the already legendary Kronos Quartet. There is, however, one huge problem and that’s that I just can’t imagine anyone liking more than, say, 25% of these 51 minutes without having seen the movie. Featuring a string of no less than 33 “songs” (or “sound sequences”), the soundtrack is a dizzying combination of analogue and digital approaches, of four string instruments accompanied by distorted beats, 30-second fragments of industrial dance music and minimalist, sci-fi keyboard-textures. While several melodies and sub-themes reoccur (“Dreams” appears three times in the similar versions, just like “Ghosts of Things to Come,” “Ghosts,” “Ghosts-Falling” and “Ghosts of a Future Lost” are variations on similar themes), the titles themselves are often already an indication of their function in the movie (“Party,” “Marion Barfs,” “The Beginning of the End”). As many other era-defining films with legendary or innovating soundtracks, Requiem for a Dream also has a main theme, in this case a steadily intensifying threat/overture that already announces itself in the beginning of the movie (“Summer Overture”), and reappears during various instances during the movie (“Hope Overture,” “Marion Barfs,” “Winter Overture”) and finally arrives at its extremely pitiless climax (more like an absolute nadir in this case). Of course, this doesn’t make any sense if you haven’t seen the movie (go away! Read my Johnny Cash reviews or just do something!), - and it makes me wonder why I bought the DVD and the CD -, but anyone who did see it will immediately be reminded of the images that accompanied the delirious music hall tequila of “Bugs Got a Devilish Grin Conga” or the doom-pending strings of “Southern Hospitality” and “The Beginning of the End.” Ungraspable, like the movie, yet also as effectively disturbing, the best moments of Requiem for a Dream define stomach-turning nausea like few other soundtracks did before.