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Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 film adaptation of the 1978 novel of the same name. The novel was written by Hubert Selby, Jr.; the film adaptation was directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starred Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans. Burstyn was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance. The film was screened out of competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.

The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a dream world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken and devastated by reality.

The film charts three seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans). Each character is ultimately destroyed by addiction and self-delusion.

The story begins in summer. Sara Goldfarb, an elderly widow living alone in her Brighton Beach apartment, spends her time watching infomercials on television. After a phone call announces that she will be invited to be a participant on a game show, she becomes obsessed with matching her appearance to a photograph from Harry's graduation, her proudest moment. In order to fit into her old red dress, the favorite of her deceased husband, she begins taking a regimen of prescription weight-loss amphetamine pills throughout the day and a sedative at night. The pills alter her behavior, but she passionately insists that the chance to be on television has given her a reason to live. Over the fall, however, her invitation does not arrive, and she begins to up her dosage, causing nightmarish hallucinations, where she is the principal subject of the game show.



Her son Harry is a heroin addict. Together with his friend, Tyrone, and his girlfriend, Marion — who are also addicts — he enters the drug trade in an attempt to realize their dreams. With the money they make over the summer, Harry and Marion hope to open a fashion store for Marion's designs, while Tyrone dreams of escaping the street and making his mother proud. However, at the beginning of fall, Tyrone is caught in the middle of a drug gang assassination, causing Harry to use the majority of the money they've earned to bail him out of prison. Meanwhile, because of the arrests and shootings of dealers, it becomes very hard to obtain any drugs, throwing Harry, Tyrone, and Marion into a state of deprivation. Growing more desperate, Harry convinces Marion to have sex with her psychiatrist in exchange for money, causing a rift in the relationship. The group continues to deteriorate as Marion begins prostituting herself and Harry's arm becomes severely infected from improper injection technique.

With winter comes the final arc in the characters' downward spirals. Sara's sanity unravels and she is put in a mental institution, where she undergoes painful electroconvulsive therapy. Harry and Tyrone travel to Florida, believing they can start over there, but Harry's deteriorating condition forces them to visit a hospital, where they are arrested. However, Harry is taken to another hospital because of his arm, and it is amputated. Tyrone must deal with racist prison guards, hard labor, and drug withdrawal all alone. Harry has a recurring dream of Marion waiting for him at a pier, but awakens and realizes that he is alone. Marion meets with a pimp, who makes her have sex with him for drugs and later at an orgy for heroin.

Lost in misery, each character curls into a fetal position. In Sara's dream, however, she wins the grand prize that the game show offers and meets Harry here. In her fantasy, Harry is a successful businessman, engaged to Marion. Mother and son hug and say how much they love one another through the cheers of the crowd and the glowing stage lights.