--- Micheal Ellis <onyxmirr at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > At least last year,
> >"Pollock" got an award and so did "Requiem for a
> >dream"...
>
> don't make too much of that..after all "requiem.."
> was
> anti drugs.....
Michael, as you have probably discerned from reading some of my emails, I am not anti-drug. I would have wonderful things to say about the proper use of such substances as marijuana, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, Ecstacy, etc.
These drugs can (and are)SOMETIMES abused, despite any benign effects they may have. This is not to mention highly addictive drugs like heroin. No matter, I think treating drug users and abusers as criminals is wrongheaded and I am for legalization.
That said, I found "Requiem" to be quite accurate. Drugs were not used to temporarily escape this reality or to gain some kind of insight. They were used to deny reality. However, not only were drugs used but so was television. The mother gets hooked on "speed" because she wants to lose weight in order to fit into a favorite dress, so that she could appear on some "trash" televsion show...an attempt to forget her loneliness.
I would say that the movie is not so much about drugs as it was about making pacts with the Devil to skirt around life....drugs, television and sex (I am not against either of the three) were the means used in the movie. The author could have used excessive jogging, gambling or any of a number of other passtimes.
An after school special would have shined a positive light on the doctor, who turned the addict in, and the policemen (they would have been depicted as saviours). This movie did exactly the opposite.
Thomas
===== "The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living"
-Karl Marx
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