The Making of 'Requiem for a Dream' (2001) (V)

User Rating:

4.8/10   

Genre:

Documentary | Short

Cast

Darren Aronofsky	...	Himself
Ellen Burstyn	...	Herself
Jennifer Connelly	...	Herself
Jared Leto	...	Himself
Matthew Libatique	...	Himself
Christopher McDonald	...	Himself
Marlon Wayans	...	Himself

Runtime:

35 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Company:

Artisan Home Entertainment

Trivia:

This making of documentary is featured on the Director's Cut DVD for Requiem for a Dream (2000), released in 2002.

Movie Connections:

References Star Wars (1977)

Aronofsky's commentary adds some limited value but really this is barely worth watching

With plenty of footage shot during the making of the film, Aronofsky takes us through stages in the making of the film starting with the first day, the stop motion footage of Burstyn cleaning, the gory scenes and the score mixing at Skywalker Ranch. Despite being billed as a 'making of' documentary, this is far from being what the film itself deserves – in fact it is so thin that it barely deserves to be called a documentary. Rather this is about 35 minutes of amateur-shot footage from the set of Requiem that appears to be wholly random in regards what it is focusing on at any one time.

Aronofsky tries to put a brave face on it but even he is struggling to really have much to say about what he is watching from his commentary position. One or two times I was interested in the technology involved or the process involved but mainly the film was just pretty dull. The footage is not structured in any way and there seems to be no real reason why we are shown things such as Skywalker or people just milling around – if it had had a series of talking heads through it and over it then maybe, but with just the commentary as an afterthought it really doesn't work. I can only assume from this that they were looking for stuff to put on the DVD and found they had loads of background footage and decided to just use it because they could – however I really question whether or not they should.

I love Requiem and it deserved a really good 'making of' that covers the writing, the concepts, the feelings of the actors, the stories, the little memories and valid, interest comments on the main aspects of the film. What it didn't deserve was just hand-held footage of the cast & crew working and hanging around while a slightly embarrassed and unsure of himself Aronofsky tries the best he can to add narration to scenes that he sees everyday (it would like be trying to narrate footage of my day at work!). Two or three things of value in the whole 'documentary' – a really pointless film that is barely worth watching.