Requiem For A Dream: The Illusion Of Intimacy
The true horror of drug abuse lies in the fundamental disconnection between oneself, others, and the world. It is the haziness of mental vision and the growing realization of one’s own powerlessness.
“You are the most beautiful girl in the world. You are my dream,”
Harry says to his girlfriend Marion as they lie next to each other in a heroin-fueled haze.
He is not lying; he really does dream about her. In it, she stands far off as a thin, red mass in an ocean of blue. She has her back turned towards him, lost in her own thoughts and dreams.
He tries to call out to her, but sounds do not exist in the realm of his dream. When he finally manages to get her attention, reality takes over, and the illusion vanishes.
This dream showcases Harry’s fundamental purpose and desire.
Even when they lie right next to each other, naked, their hands intimately gliding and navigating through each other’s bare skin, their distance is palpable through the split screens.
They are physically close, but they exist in different dimensions, their disconnection and fickle intimacy both consequences of the drug that now flows through their systems.
Harry so desperately wishes to reduce this distance. She is, he believes, his only means to reconnect with the life that he dissociated from so many years ago. He actively desires to escape his addiction and own his flaws and responsibilities.
We can comprehend why Harry is suspicious when Marion has a meeting with her therapist.
He understands himself and knows how much drug addicts lack in self-control and integrity, and how they find the easiest way possible out of any situation.
She justifies his jealousy and doubt by sleeping with her therapist to keep him quiet, to keep her life stagnant.
Their relationship is based on a multitude of lies and facades that they are both subconsciously aware of and that they both try to hide from themselves and each other.
They try to escape from their guilt, sadness and loneliness by letting substances take control of them. They try to get rid of their own thoughts, to try and help them feel better about everything, to feel more connected to one another.
Thus, the cycle of trying to free themselves by entrapping themselves within the fantastical world of drugs goes on and on.
The true horror of drug abuse lies in the fundamental disconnection between oneself, others, and the world. It is the haziness of mental vision and the growing realization of one’s own powerlessness.
So, when the couple runs short of heroin, they disrobe themselves and their feelings to each other. Self-hatred, loneliness and internal anguish explode out of them.
She screams words of abuse at him when he fails to get her the substance that hides all of her pain. He tries to convince her and make her believe that it is okay to sleep with the therapist he was initially jealous of to obtain the money that he thinks is the key to their salvation.
As each of them becomes more and more desperate and disillusioned, they reveal more and more to each other about themselves, thus propelling their descent into a hell of mental agony and despair.
Towards the end, when Harry lies in the hospital, he dreams one last time before he realizes that he has lost Marion forever, that his dream of connection and intimacy will never come true.
“No, she won’t ”
he says, with tears in his eyes, when the nurse tries to convince him that Marion will come to see him.
They both curl themselves into a fetal position as they both lie alone, disconnected and hopeless, trying desperately to relive the magical comfort and warmth provided by a mother’s womb.
