Requiem for a Dream 2

So I was told this film has love juice on tap. And it’s got juice alright. But it’s so full of hate I’m tempted to pull the plug out the wall. In my armchair my arms are hiving. It’s a reaction to early eighties TV. There’s this double noose tied like rabbit ears. There’s the opening credits like a chain round my neck. I’m expecting at least one broken mother, but ten before the director arrives is threatening me a heart attack. In a daydream someone is slowly wheeling my set towards the door. On the screen as it leaves is a skinny girl hugging her knees. In the end it’s all nice, it’s all yo-yos and dingy elevators, all seedy men growing hair out the bottoms of their feet, all fake, all sarcastic, all boarded-up amusement parks strewn with disembodied arms. The weight of being alive is enough; I can’t schlep this film on my back as well. I’m all about the anticipation: I could watch people slapping up their veins for days. I could cut my life in half and still get wasted. An old woman drinks hot chocolate from her hands. A cop has sex with his donut. The world wants TV to be more like a drug again. Everyone’s tired of what happened next. Even the dead are a younger-looking thirty. Their bodies are dry-cleaned: they do not shrink. They fart in public so that we can sell them. And I’m here and my diet’s gone to shit. Inside all I find is the repetition of meals. I focus on the insanity while I can, before I remember it isn’t real anymore. A corpse gets a chin lift for wolf whistles. I get to thinking how gorgeous I’d look at a slightly slowed down speed. That’s the power of this film. It’s a pound of pure I could cut in two. The actors are all a little orange and all a little pregnant. The babies they won’t have are completely meaningless. No one builds up enough courage to fuck their parents though. They say ‘I love you’ instead. I could murder the world in the right red dress. Less lifeless that way, less drab. We’re making for a darker tomorrow. And it’s one o’clock all day. Maybe if I exercise enough I could sweat out my soul. The prospect excites me, but I’m sitting down. The women murmur. I catch marital status, dynamite, ripped sneakers. They laugh until summer is just the spot on the planet they happen to be. I’m going to need the number of a doctor. I’m going to ask some sweetheart to put her arms around me. I’m that indisposed. Everyone’s thirsty, but not everyone can drink their own body weight in pathos. I’m drooling again and I can’t stop. I feel a certain way is the trap I’m trying to avoid. The idea I know is to scare me to death. But it’s more like a friend that’s entered the building wanting something to eat, making me dizzy, having a baby down the toilet, desilvering my mirror. By which time nobody in the film knows what they’re doing. A man and a woman foam at the mouth. They’ve got sick and died ten times already, just so millions of people would see them. They say it’s a reason to get up in the morning. I’m lonely. I’m old. I have lots of babies. I have an appointment in Manhattan that will make me feel like a person. Actors acting is nothing to worry about. We’re all holding the same taste. The hope is that I’ll fill up again on whatever it is this film has sucked out. I just don’t know what I’ll have to do to get it. After all, I’ve had the flu for forever. I need for the light to go off. I need for it to seem like a thousand years when I’ve been waiting all night. We’re reaching the end, the point beyond which no one escapes being fucked by a sleazebag. The inescapable determinism of this is threatening to bite me. The take home message is ‘I’m not going to make it’. It’s Florida, it’s drought, it looks like shock. I get to shoot up in the idea of my arm. I take myself to psyche. I go all through Europe. I start taking the pills. The taste of anything is too much. I hold my nose when I eat. I smoke a circular saw. I perfect ass to ass, eyes almost popping out my head. I need more medicine. I love when there’s nothing else.

editor’s note: this post is part of our Sight Unseen series in which people review movies or they have NOT seen or read. Guidelines for submitting to Sight Unseen can be found here