Addiction is a theme often explored in cinema. Sinatra rolled up his sleeve for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955, a courageous move for both filmmaker and actor to cook up (pun intended, sorry) such a movie, taken of course from the brave and beautiful book of the same name by Nelson Algren. Algren’s poetic prose was unflinching in its depiction of degenerates, drunkards and dope heads as he waded valiantly through the scummy waters of drug use and addiction. In 1978 However Hubert Selby immersed himself completely and slipped right under. Requiem for a Dream was born, a novel which took America, the land of dreams and twisted it into something dark and unseemly. It took over 20 years for somebody to take up the reigns and project this living nightmare onto the silver screen. That man was the young visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky.
