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Movies to Watch in College:
Kinsey and Requiem for a Dream
by William Killeen
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Laura Linney and Liam Neeson star in Kinsey, which debuted in theaters last fall and has recently been released for video and DVD rental. |
Kinsey, with its coquettish tagline "Let's talk about sex...," promises off the shelf to be a candid, almost comedic portrayal of the famous "Kinsey Report" on human sexuality. One imagines from the cover and the trailers for the film that the viewer will be treated to the story of blundering, old Dr. Kinsey fumbling his way through the sensitive topics published in his reports while the fame of his groundbreaking work puts him in a series of laughable misadventures. Perhaps the movie might contain actual information relevant to the man or the study, but nothing too serious.
Abandon that thought now: Kinsey is a serious film--but with a soft-hearted, optimistic perspective. Professor Kinsey is portrayed not as a hero or as an oaf, but as a man whose sole wish is to understand what no one else has attempted to scientifically understand before: sexuality. In his quest for the scientific truth, he gets tangled up in the corded knot of human relationships that challenges Kinsey's presumption of sex as mere biology.
Professor Kinsey's story is told in an autobiographical format. From his childhood to his "golden years," we see Kinsey's life as both a sexual being and as a scientist. His involvement with sexual studies leads to numerous conversations with people about their sex life, ranging from the conservative to the outright bizarre and perverse. At the same time, Professor Kinsey begins fighting a battle for sexual tolerance; and takes up not only the fight for homosexual rights, but also for a general relaxation of sex offender laws. An outraged public begins fighting against Kinsey's studies, and the professor finds himself between the need to finish his research and society's wish that he stop.
Those looking for an earnest approach to human sexuality will not be disappointed, as the film touches on plenty of sexual topics and the misconceptions the 1950s American public had about sexuality. Perverts looking for some full frontal won't be disappointed either, but the footage with nudity has a more "documentary" edge to it than an erotic one. From the sterile university course on "human hygiene" that is replaced by Kinsey's "Sex and Marriage" class, to Kinsey's own sexual experiences that take dramatic turns; to Kinsey's conversation with a man who has had over nine thousand sexual encounters, the movie spares nothing in the way of showcasing sexuality in the raw.
In the end, however, Kinsey is not a movie about sex but a story about a scientist who finds himself in the middle of a controversy he doesn't understand. To Professor Kinsey, humanity is just another animal whose behavior hasn't been catalogued yet. That people are arrested for "deviant" sexual practices his research concludes to be natural is an injustice to him, and he begins fighting for a more enlightened world. However, Kinsey's research ultimately cannot ignore the innately human questions of morality and love, leaving the stern scientist with questions he cannot answer and a world he cannot quantify.
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Requiem for a Dream is a black pit of despair that out-darkens all other dark films. From Darren Aronofsky, the director of Pi, and based on the novel by Hubert Selby, Requiem is literally about the deaths of four people's dreams. We are invited to join in their macabre story of high hopes and broken promises, all the while watching the characters plummet further and further into despair and desperation. And it even has a kick-ass soundtrack (made entirely of classical music, no less).
Harry is a kid with a best friend, a loving mother, a beautiful girlfriend, and a serious addiction to heroine. Everyday he steals his mother's TV, takes it down to the local pawnshop, uses the money for cocaine or heroine, and waits for his mother to go down to the pawnshop to buy the TV back. |
Requiem stars Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayons. |
His mother is no worse in her habits, watching the TV obsessively and doing little else. Tyrone, Harry's friend, helps haul the TV back and forth - for a piece of Harry's drug stash. Harry's girlfriend, Marion, is also an addict; and the three of them get along just fine. Life isn't great, but life is steady.
All that changes in the summer, when Harry and Tyrone decide to stop using drugs and start selling drugs. Marion decides that she'll open up her design studio. And Harry's mother gets a call from a TV studio telling her she'll be a contestant for a game show. Everyone now has their dream. And everyone works hard to make the dream a reality. And it works. That is, until a mafia war cuts off Harry and Tyrone's supply of drugs, Marion begins sleeping around out of desperation for money and cocaine, and Harry's mother begins using amphetamine-laced dieting pills to lose weight for a TV show that never calls her back.
Requiem is a movie about addiction: of not being able to give up when you should. All the characters hold onto their dream, letting it fill them with false hope even as everything falls further and further apart. And the more they cling to their dying dreams, the more distant they grow from each other; until all they have is the dead dream, loss, and withdrawal.
It's dark, depressing, and disturbing. There are scenes of drug use, explicit language, and explicit sexual content, among other things. The movie's music, composed entirely of requiems, is somber and depressing throughout. The cinematography is artsy film student, with a lot of split-screens for no reason, a bunch of iris dilation close-up shots, and rapid scene changes that may cause motion sickness. Requiem is a college film: one of those cult classics that hits up there with Full Metal Jacket, Solaris (the original), and A Clockwork Orange. Yes, two of those were Kubrick films--but few directors do "disturbing dark" very well so there's a shortage of good examples. Nonetheless, Requiem is one of those depressingly good movies - but keep the kids far away and have some Prozac close at hand when you watch.
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