FauxNixon

Fourth in my ongoing Great Directors series is Darren Aronofsky, best known for Pi, and Requiem for a Dream. He was born February 12, 1969 in Brooklyn, NY, and has always had a love for movies. He attended Harvard University and his thesis film Supermarket Sweep is included on the list below as one I have not yet seen and do not feel myself fit to judge or review. That movie starred Sean Gullette, which has since become one of Aronofsky’s frequent habits in his films.

Aronofsky is known to frequently employ very fast-paced, quick edited montages in his films to help the viewer get more of a feeling for the repeated action that the montage seeks to display. Additionally, he tend to use a camera which is strapped to one of his actors for at least one of the shots in his films and often features string instruments or techno in his movie’s soundtracks.

The List:
(These are presented ranked in order of their overall quality in my opinion.)

1. Pi (1998) — Considered by many to be one of the greatest independent films of all time, Pi tells us the story of a genius-level mathematician named Max (Sean Gullette) obsessed with a number that he believes may hold the key to understanding virtually everything in the universe. Max is plagued by vicious migraine headaches and is very paranoid, and for good reason: a sect of Hasidic Jews, and a group of Wall Street brokers also believe this number holds keys for their goals and are actively either surveilling him, and then trying to bribe him, and even kidnap him to achieve their goals.

It is a fantastic film, shot entirely in black and white and cost only $60,000 to produce. It was then purchased by Artisan for $1,000,000, which makes it a fantastically successful film for Aronofsky, in a personal, fiscal sense.

2. Requiem for a Dream (2000) — Based upon the novel Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr., who also wrote the screenplay, Requiem for a Dream is the story of how addiction affects four people in New York City. It features Aronofsky’s point-of-view shots from the actors and a haunting soundtrack and is considered one of the best movies ever made, ranked #65 in the Top 250 of the IMDb as of the writing of this article.

Harry Goldfarb (Jared Leto), his girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and his best-friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans), are all addicted to heroin and dabble in other drugs, as well. Harry and Tyrone often visit his mother Sara Goldfarb’s (Ellen Burstyn) house to take her television set and bring it to the local pawn-broker for money to buy more heroin.

Sara is addicted to watching television and when she receives a telephone call from a company purporting itself to be the casting agent used by most game shows telling her that she will be on television, she goes out of her way to look her best, dyeing her hair and trying to get into her favorite red dress, but she doesn’t fit. As a result, she visits a doctor who prescribes her stimulants, to which she becomes addicted.

The film is haunting, sorrowful, and terribly realistic in its portrayal of honest addiction in both its highs and its lows. All four characters end the movie in their various settings and individual final scenes curled up into a fetal position. It was nominated for an Oscar and received twenty other film awards.

According to the IMDb, whereas most movies contained between 600-700 cuts, this movie employs over 2,000. Directly quoting from the Trivia page for Requiem for a Dream at IMDb is one of the most telling elements of the production which illustrates its honesty:

During Ellen Burstyn’s impassioned monologue about how it feels to be old, cinematographer Matthew Libatique accidentally let the camera drift off-target. When director Darren Aronofsky called “cut” and confronted him about it, he realized the reason Libatique had let the camera drift was because he had been crying during the take and fogged up the camera’s eyepiece. This was the take used in the final print.

3. The Fountain (2006) — I have actually already reviewed this movie, but I will provide a brief overview here to keep consistency with the formatting of this series of posts.

The Fountain is a three-part, simultaneous narrative featuring Rachel Weiscz and Hugh Jackman connected in three different stories: one in the past, during the time of the conquistadors where Jackman is sent by Weiscz as the queen of Spain to find the tree of life; one set in the present where Jackman plays a doctor who is an obsessive workaholic trying desperately to find a cure for his wife’s (Weiscz) terminal cancer; and a third set thousands of years in the future where Jackman is traveling through space in a sphere with some vegetation, including a large tree that appears to be both sentient and his sustenance during his voyage towards the afterlife in a distant star system.

It is a complex movie that is challenging to watch, but is absolutely beautiful and upon repeated viewings and a full understanding, absolutely ingenious in its narrative, story, inter-connectivity and thematic explorations of life, love, and death, and the nature of the three.

The Fountain as reviewed on FauxNixon.com“>FauxNixon by Nathan Thoms is found here.

Made, but not seen by myself: Protozoa (1993), Fortune Cookie (1991) and Supermarket Sweep (1991).