Thanks for nothin'

'Requiem' for this year's best overlooked movie.

I'd like to thank the Academy for confirming its status as a bunch of tasteless philistines in passing up Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream for a Best Picture nomination. That's right, sexual chocolate and a trite Ben Hur rehash won out over this year's most intense cinematic experience. And I mean intense. When I originally watched this gem in the theater, a girl a few rows in front of me threw up her lunch after the film's climactic montage. Not only that, but after she was done spewing her vomitous chunks, she finished watching the rest of the film. That's quality.

Unlike the majority of this year's Academy picks, Requiem is a work of art of the highest order, a visceral freak-out ride into the darkest depths of humanity. Aronofsky's novel use of montage, coupled with incredible performances by Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and—heaven forbid—Marlon Wayans, plus a memorable violin/techno soundtrack by Clint Mansell, results in a film so gripping and horrifying that it leaves its audience completely sapped of spirit.

Requiem is about the destruction of hope through addiction to the American dream, but the film is also a drug unto itself. The real beauty of Requiem is not its message (if that were the case, it wouldn't trump Traffic). Through nauseating flash-cut editing and performances of soul-stirring honesty, Requiem puts you inside its characters' minds and never lets up.

Is it melodramatic? Yes. But so is Picasso's Guernica. Aronofsky is unabashed in his extremist misery, unapologetic in his portrayal of hope crushed by human frailty and the conventions of modern society. Requiem for a Dream lives up to its title. It is a two-hour elegy to human aspiration. If it seems overly bleak, then that's just the point. The film, like heroin, drops you into an altered, irrational state of mind. And if that isn't art, if it isn't evidence of one of this year's best pictures, then hand over the little golden man to Pokémon 2000, because I'm leaving the country.

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