requiem (n) – a religious ceremony for the dead.
dream (n) – a state of mind marked by abstraction or release from reality.
Requiem for a Dream is a very intense, very graphic movie that follows the lives of four individuals who become addicts. The content is extraordinarily raw and includes drug use, violence, prostitution and nudity, all in graphic detail. I have not watched this film as a Spirit-filled Christian, and I am not suggesting that others watch it.
However, I want to talk about the film because it’s a very realistic depiction of human nature and the nature of sin. It’s also related to something the Lord has been showing me for the past year (more on that later).
The film starts out in spring/summer as four people begin to chase their dreams. One of them is an aspiring fashion designer, two of them want to be big time drug dealers, and another (one of the drug dealer’s moms) wants to be on TV. The mom also wants to lose a lot of weight, because she believes she needs it to look glamorous for television.
Throughout the warm months, these characters are flying high on the wings of their aspirations. It’s the beginning of a lot of drug use — diet pills for the mom; heroine for everyone else — and things are going swimmingly. Their dreams are right there in front of them, juuuust within reach.
Just a little further and they’ll get there. Just a little further and they’ll be able to reach those goals…just a little more. Just a few more deals, just a little more money, just a few more pills and a little more weightloss.
Just.
Just.
Just.
Then the season changes. It’s fall, and everything begins to fall apart. The drugs are taking hold of each character now. Addictions are forming, but the heroine supply has all but dried up because of some major busts taking place in the city.
Things are not going so swimmingly anymore. These characters’ dreams, which had been so close, are now slipping out of reach.
But, okay, just a little more — this is the mindset. They need just a little more to get back to where they were, to make up for what’s been lost.
Just a little more. Just a little.
Just.
Just.
Just.
The season changes again. Now it’s winter, and everyone’s worst nightmares are coming to life. The young woman has abandoned her dream of become a fashion designer, and by the end she’s shown as a drug-addicted prostitute, sexually degraded before men just so she can get paid in heroin.
The drug dealers end up in prison. The one who was dating the would-be fashion designer, who was going to fund her fashion business with all the drug money he was planning to make — his arm gets amputated because of an infection (from shooting up). The other dealer ends up with hard time and labor-detail overseen by racist guards.
The mom is so addicted to diet pills – and subsequently is so terrified of gaining weight – that she has hallucinations. In one such hallucination, the refrigerator chases her. She ends up in a mental hospital, getting electro-shock therapy, and has to be fed through a feeding tube. In the end, she remains trapped in her delusion of being on TV and continues to have fantasies about being on her favorite show.
It’s no wonder the book / film were titled Requiem for a Dream. A requiem is a religious ceremony for the dead. The characters in this film are all alive and breathing at the end, but inside they truly are dead – a death that comes through sin.
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…. – Ephesians 2:1
For the wages of sin is death…. – Romans 6:23
Darren Aronofsky, director of the film (which is based on the book by Hubert Selby, Jr.), once described the story as “the lengths people go to escape their reality .” He explains that “when you escape that reality, you create a hole in your present, because you’re not there. You’re chasing off a pipe dream in the future, and then you’ll use anything to fill that vacuum.”
Aronofsky may or may not realize this, but what he’s describing is a process that happens when people pursue their idols — called “idolatry.” This was described several thousand years ago, in great detail, throughout the entire Bible.
“But (Judah) carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans portrayed in red . . . . As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. . . . .
“When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from (Samaria). Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.” – Ezekiel 23:14-20
God isn’t describing actual prostitution (though there was plenty of that going on in the land, too). What He’s saying is that idolatry is LIKE prostitution.
Prostitutes exchange sex for something they want (usually money or drugs).
Idolaters exchange any number of things (money, time, devotion, affection, dedication, thoughts, loyalty, fantasies) for whatever their idol is. That idol could be anything, even something as harmless as a favorite sports team, a job, a spouse. Even ideas and feelings can be idols (e.g. an idol of acceptance, an idol of vanity).
Our fallen nature is such that we can take even good things and turn them into idols in our lives. When we chase idols, when we live for them and center our worlds around them, we become like prostitutes. In Requiem for a Dream, the would-be fashion designer actually became a prostitute for her idol, which was heroine. But the other characters became prostitutes for their vices and fantasies, too. Just in different ways.
The entire film is a perfect picture of slavery — but it’s not enslavement to a person, per se. It’s enslavement to sin, and Satan is a cruel taskmaster.
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. – John 8:34
Many people don’t want to believe it, but every single one of us is capable of the things depicted in Requiem for a Dream. Granted, it may not be drug addiction for everyone, because sin manifests differently in different people, but everyone worships something. We know that because we were created by God to be worshipers, but the Fall of Man twisted that God-given design into iniquity that dwells within all of us.
“For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” – Mark 7:21-23
Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins. – Ecclesiastes 7:20
The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? – Jeremiah 17:9
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” – Romans 3:9-18g]”>
Most people would probably argue that their sin isn’t as bad as what’s found in Requiem for a Dream. I do agree that many people’s sin isn’t as OVERT as what’s in that book/film, that it likely doesn’t manifest in a way that’s as blatant as the sin of four drug addicts — but I would also argue that the same rottenness that exists in those four drug addicts exists in every single one of us. The rottenness just manifests in different ways.
Some of those ways are more overt, some are less. Some ways are more obvious, some are less.
But the rottenness is still there. In me. In you. In everyone on the planet. So then, what is the solution? I think the apostle Paul said it best when he explained his own fallen nature and then encouraged God’s people with the ULTIMATE ANSWER.
And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.
I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord…. – Romans 7:18-25
That hole in a person’s “present” that the director of the film mentioned — that’s an emptiness within all of us, and it will always be there until until we have fellowship with our Creator. Because He is the only one who can fill that emptiness. When we make Jesus the Lord and Savior of our lives, His redemptive work on the cross empowers us to turn away from our idols, to walk away from the bondage of sin, and to experience true freedom in Him…and to have fellowship with God, our Creator, once again.
The Lord showed me something in daily life, which He prompted me to take photos of over the course of a year. I did, and I’m going to share it in Part 2 of this blog. It’s related to this discussion about Requiem for a Dream.
I believe God was showing me a very simple, very evident picture of these things (the nature of sin and idolatry) right in the midst of my every day life.
