1 "He knows the dream of falling leaves, after spring or autumn"
Ninety years ago, Lu Xun thought about the relationship between spring, summer, autumn and winter in China. He didn't have Shelley's optimism and didn't believe that winter was followed by spring. Nine years ago, Darren Aronofsky pondered the same question in his film Requiem for a Dream. It's a film made up of three movements—summer, autumn, and winter—connected by a recurring theme. When summer comes, we see good hope. Because the plentiful summer rains and scorching sun seem to herald a bumper harvest in the coming fall. Harry's mother's long red dress was like summer, full of passion and hope. That's exactly what happened. Harry's mother Sara's weight loss efforts to be on TV have been fruitful, and Harry's own "business" is booming. Putting aside the fact that Harry was selling drugs, at least the benefits of the business gave Harry the ability to put a smile on the faces of the two women he loved so much. The extravagant home theater made Harry's mother see hope for her son, and Harry's girlfriend, Marion, began to seriously plan to open her own clothing store. Everyone is happy under the sunshine, full of hope for the future. But the longing is just longing. When the long red dress evolved into the fallen leaves in late autumn, the hope was dashed. The expected bumper harvest did not come, replaced by confusion and bitter fruit. Sara devoured diet pills frantically and gradually lost consciousness. Tappy's arrest on bail drains all their savings, Marion sells his body to the doctor for drug money, and the hunger that used to torture people is back, hunger for drugs, hunger for meaning. Harry and Tappy thought about planting in another place, but winter came so mercilessly. In the swirling snow, everyone is heading towards the end of their fate. Snowflakes fell on Sara's red dress, covering the original bright, leaving a blood-like despair. Sara's drug abuse landed her in the hospital, Tappy was arrested, and Harry lost an arm and thus the foundation of his pre-existing existence - heroin. Marion offered sex in exchange for drugs. It was a bitterly cold winter, grey, gloomy, and hopeless.
At the end of the film, the four people invariably return to their unborn posture in the mother's body. They turned to the right, their legs tucked in front of their chests, their hands clasped together as if they were clinging to the last meaning. But Marion was holding a small packet of heroin, and the other three were holding dreams that could never be realized. There was once a place we can never go back to. Even posing in a familiar pose would not bring back the hope he once had. Winter comes to an end in a mournful theme, and for the four on screen, there will never be spring.
2. Hospitals and Police – Protectors or Accomplices?
What makes our society exist? What helps us when we lose our way? Hospitals that heal the body and police that protect norms are essential parts of a healthy society. However, doctors and police officers, who have long been regarded as protectors, become accomplices in the film that accelerate people's madness. In the face of abnormal patients and "scumbags", they did not explore the deep reasons behind their behaviors, but imposed self-righteous "treatment methods" on "patients". When Sara was sent to the hospital, although she was mentally ill, she was still able to speak, but after receiving the "treatment", she not only could no longer speak, but also lost the last gleam in her eyes. She kept her hopes and dreams about TV and her son in a place that no one knew about, and only dared to take them out in the dead of night to savor them carefully. For doctors, their goal was achieved. Because after the treatment, Sara will never harm others again. She walks, sits, and eats obediently, becoming the best representative of the norm. But she's no longer Sara, at least during the day, maybe she's just a number. And beside the deranged Sara, there is also a doctor talking about his all-night gambling.
In this chaotic society, our lives are always faced with the hidden danger of destruction and destruction, and the expected doctors and police will never come. Like the announcement from the TV station that Sara was waiting for, like the bright future that Harry and his girlfriend fantasized about. Society in the norm is a giant soap bubble, phantasmagorically spring-like on the sunlit side, but in the shadows there is nothing but our own hopeless reflections. In the pain of life, even the last fantasy is deprived, leaving only the desperate physical torture.
The disappearance of three springs and the death of love
When spring comes, flowers and willows are everywhere, full of vitality. It's a season for shyness, it's a season for love to exist. All four people in the film firmly remember what their own spring was like. For Sara, spring was Harry's high school graduation, and she wore a long red dress and gold shoes with a charming smile. For Tappy, spring is the warm and fragrant embrace of his mother as a child. For Marion, spring was Harry, who made her "live like a human again". To Harry, spring was an azure sea, and on the white pier, there was a woman in a red dress with her long hair slightly raised in the sea breeze. Even the people at the bottom hold their dreams and work tirelessly for their dreams at the bottom of the filth. It is love that connects the four people together, and it is love that makes the lives of the four people have a little meaning. However, in this society where there is no spring at all, perhaps love itself can only stay in a dream. It is weak, powerless, and insecure. It can only stay in a dream and never dare to set foot in reality. Sara loves her son deeply. The pawn shop owner told her that you should let the police take care of your son who always pawns your TV. My mother said with a smile, that can't be done, he is my only son. Harry loved Marion too, otherwise he wouldn't be jealous when Marion was going to see a psychiatrist. This meager but pure love is the only spark that flashes in the dark colors of the whole film, and it is also the most profound driving force behind the actions of the four people.
However, spring has disappeared, and love has lost its own suitable soil. Just like a flower that has left the land, it slowly withers in the chaotic and complicated reality, and finally it can only become an emptiness, leaving a beautiful phantom in the depths of people's hearts. Harry, who woke up from the amputation operation, saw the blue sea again, but there was no woman in red on the seashore, only an endless dark abyss. Harry's final call to Marion, between waking and dreaming, becomes a moving lament at the end of the film. It sings because of the disappearance of spring, it rings because of the death of love, and it becomes the ultimate requiem for beautiful dreams.
Where is the spring of life? Maybe it's just a dream. But the reality of our life is just an endless cycle of summer, autumn and winter. We have hope, we lose hope, we lose ourselves. In this never-ending cycle, dreams are the last refuge. And Darren Aronofsky's "Requiem for Dreams" sings a dream elegy for us, leaving us with a gray reality.
View more about Requiem for a Dream reviews
