A lot of people couldn’t even get through this movie once; it gets pretty gruesome toward the end. I own it on DVD and have seen it at least a dozen times.
It’s not gruesome in the blood and guts horror movie scene. But it has some very graphic depictions of heroin use and the effects of its addiction. I don’t know that it advocates singlehood per se, but the romantic and familial relationships are twisted.
Ellen Burstyn stars as Sara Goldfarb, a widow who’s addicted to TV, junk food, and memories of her past life with a husband and son. Thanks to a junk phone call telling her she’ll have the opportunity to be on television, she becomes addicted to diet pills. Jared Leto plays her son, Harry, who’s addicted to heroin and a Willy Lomanesque version of the American Dream, only involving selling heroin. Jennifer Connolly is his girlfriend, Marion, and Marlon Wayans, in a far cry from his comic persona, is his buddy Tyrone.
Sara has a heartbreaking monologue where she tells Harry about ever since her husband Seymour died and Harry moved out of the house, she has no purpose. This opportunity to be on TV is the only thing she really has, which motivates her to take these pills. A favorite red dress of hers is symbolic of her desire to want to go back to what she sees as better times. She’s amazing throughout the movie, but I’m sure that scene is the main reason she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar that year.
This scene is emblematic about the trouble widows face. While I’m sympathetic to the trauma a lot of widows go through, a never-married women has likely spent the time investing in her social network. So she wouldn’t be trying to fill the void Sara’s trying to.
Harry and Marion appear to enjoy a healthy relationship at first, but it seems to be mostly fueled by heroin-induced euphoria. Harry and Tyrone attempt to establish a drug empire, which goes well at first – until it doesn’t. They lose their money and their connection; on a trip to Florida to score some “dynamite skag,” Harry’s arm becomes deeply infected, which lands them in a hospital, then jail.
Marion’s addiction, along with Harry’s, leads her to sleeping with her psychiatrist for drug money and eventually selling herself to a pimp and performing at sex shows for bachelor parties. We can speculate that if they weren’t coupled, they might not end up in their situations.
At its core, this is a movie about obsession. I showed it to an English class I taught. They’d read Oedipus The King, a play about that very thing. I then had them watch Requiem for a Dream, but I had to give a trigger warning about thirty minutes toward the end of the film. If you’ve seen it, you know.
And if you haven’t, it’s a good one, but not for the squeamish or easily offended. And while not necessarily pro-single, it can reaffirm the single at heart and serve as a form of aversion therapy to coupling. So give it a try. But if you don’t like sick visuals, turn it off thirty minutes toward the end and read the Wikipedia summary instead.