The famous singer Amy Winehouse is back in the UK on 2nd this month from her vacation, whose problem with drug addiction was the regular tabloid news since 2007. It is said that she comes back with a fresh new start this time. If she managed to be a good girl, it would be the happy ending of Requiem for a Dream in real life.
If there is anything that can make reality more like a dream and drive dream far away, it is addiction, whether to drug, dream or truth.
When Sara (Ellen Burstyn) was chasing her star dream desperately in Requiem for a Dream, her son (Jared Leto) and his girlfriend (Jennifer Connelly) who were rapt in the fantasy of happy life were addicted to drugs in real life. Only warm but hopeless dream connected them tightly together. Whether getting the satisfaction of mind or body while ignorance the other one of them, they may end up with endless pain.
Using: drugs in China
Another Chinese documentary film Using tells a real story also about an addict, while dreams shattered in Requiem for a Dream. A Long and A Jun are couples one of whom is addicted to drugs and have a friend who is also an addict.
The difference is instead of dream-chasing Mom here is the film director after truth who also is in the film. He makes friends with the addict, buys him meal and lends money to him, however, ends up with being cheated two hundred Yuan by the addict to buy drugs.
The filmmaker recorded the close relationship between him and the addicts in order to reflect authenticity of the story but the lie that addicts told him ruined his plan..
What makes the difference….
What really differentiates the two films is the source of pain which pushed them to the devil kiss of drugs step by step. In the Requiem for a Dream, the desperation comes from the confliction between body and mind, the constraint on dreams and restlessness of the heart.
However in the Using, the pain roots in the black side of the society which come along with prosperity of economics. Vulnerable people can hardly survive the social crisis like distrust between people, indifference to each other and polarization between the rich and the poor
Apart from investigating at close range a dark and cruel layer of reality of contemporary Chinese society that has rarely been broadcast, the documentary is also reveal the mutually using relationship between the filmmaker and the filmed subject, the director used the record of their relationship to go after his effect and the addict used the director’s trust to cheat him which added a kind of black humor flavor to the film.
(The Chinese documentary film Using will be premiered at 6pm on 24th of February in NLT2 Lecture Theatre 1 & 2, Regent Campus, University of Westminster)
