1. Requiem For A Dream (2000)
The second Hubert Selby Jnr novel adaptation on this list, Requiem for a Dream is even more gruelling to sit through due to the utterly harrowing action that unfolds on the screen. First we have the terrible story of Sara Goldfarb, a docile Jewish widow living on her own who watches a weird TV game show obsessively. She gets a call that she will soon be a contestant on that show and she fixates upon her nice red dress that she wore to her son Harry's graduation. Sara wants to wear it on TV but she cannot fit into it. Attempts at dieting fail so she gets some slimming pills from a doctor. She loses weight, but she also loses her marbles from amphetamine psychosis. She hallucinates that the TV show is happening in her living room and she also hallucinates that the refrigerator is alive. Insane beyond all helping, she travels to the TV show by train, scaring the passengers. At the TV headquarters, she is taken away by medics and brought to a psychiatric facility, and in deeply harrowing scenes she is given ECT, force fed, medicated. None of the treatment interventions work and Sarah is lost in psychosis. At the end of the movie we see two of the women from her apartment block hugging each other and crying after they see the sorry mess Sara is in. Sara's son Harry doesn't fare much better. At the beginning of the film he is blissfully in love with his girlfriend Marion and he has a partner in crime in the shape of his friend Tyrone. They get their hands on a sizeable amount of heroin (all three of them are addicted to the drug) to sell and they make a fair bit of money. However, when Tyrone gets mixed up in a drug war shooting, most of the money goes on his bail. A crackdown on heroin leaves Marion, Tyrone and Harry in a state of withdrawal and desperation. Marion sleeps with her psychiatrist for money. This was Harry's idea and Marion begins to resent him. Harry's arm is infected from shooting up. He and Tyrone decide to go to Florida in hunt of heroin but the state of Harry's arm necessitates a hospital visit. The two of them are put in jail for skipping bail. Harry has his arm sawn off and Tyrone must go through hellish withdrawals as well as dealing with a horribly racist prison regime. Marion accepts that Harry won't be coming home. She meets up with a pretty scary Pimp and agrees to do a sex show with another girl. This scene is repulsive as men with suits and ties holler at the girls and they have to do an ass to ass dildo scene. However at the end of the film, Marion curls up on the sofa with her heroin, achieving a certain kind of contentedness. Definitely one of the best films about drug addiction, if not the best, Requiem For a Dream is a highly adept adaptation of Selby's novel by Darren Aronofsky. It is stylish and quirky as well as having the capacity to tear your heart in two. The characters are all likeable, despite their flaws and their drug addiction, you grow to care about what happens to them. This makes, in particular, Sara Goldfarb's demise all the more harrowing. She has a good heart and she is terribly lonely. She has never harmed as much as a fly in her life. And she was not a conscious drug user - she was the victim of incompetent and uncaring doctors. Harry, Tyrone and Marion are not bad people - they have their dreams - but their slavery to heroin is so intense you can practically smell the heroin being cooked up in your living room. At the end everybody's individual dreams are shattered - Marion is a prostitute not a fashion designer, Tyrone hasn't made it off the streets, Sara has gone mad and will never be on TV, Harry has lost Marion and is physically impaired. Aronofsky brilliantly portrays each of their downfalls in such a harrowing fashion, it is not a movie you will forget in a hurry.