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Requiem was a gut punch, and a one-timer. Brick was awesome, but not emotionally that engaging (to me). Vote for Requiem.
Some of the films in this tournament suffer in retrospect from the directors never quite living up to the promise of a breakout, their later failures causing you to reevaluate how much genius you were assigning to a movie outside of its own merits (looking at you, Donnie Darko). Requiem for a Dream is the inverse of that. Aranofsky has grown to be such an incredible filmmaker of depth and nuance and Big Ideas that it makes you look back at his early films with a kind of fresh appreciation for what he's doing.
It must also be said that Requiem For a Dream has only become more relevant and prescient with the way it explores the human condition in the grasp of addiction, particularly with its juxtaposition of hard drugs and other, less traditional pulls like television and conspicuous consumption. Now we all live inside the neverending "scroll" of 24/7 hyper-stimulation from glowing screens inundating our lives and literally hacking our dopamine levels with skinner box slot machine precision. Ellen Burstyn's head would've exploded if she had twitter.
Requiem is traumatizing and there’s no reason to watch it a second time. The only things it teaches are that drugs are bad (which we should already know) and that people named Wayans can be serious onscreen.
Brick, meanwhile, is a tremendous undertaking in terms of originality, particularly for a first-time filmmaker. It also showed the world that JGL could be more than the guy from 3rd Rock or 10 Things, which led to him being the entertainment powerhouse that he has since become. Besides, I didn’t get a tattoo of that symbol for nothing.
I love Brick, but I think that Rian Johnson's best is likely still ahead of us. I can't say the same for Aronofsky, which is why I am willing to let Requiem take this one.
I saw Requiem for the first time a month or so ago. It lived up to the hype in some ways and fell short in others. I feel Brick was more original and fresh.
I will never subject myself to Requiem AGAIN, I meant to say.
One factor makes this very easy for me: I am 99.9% certain I will never subject myself to Requiem for a Dream, whereas I could rewatch Brick right now.
REQUIEM FOR A DREAM was such a traumatic experience that I saw it in the theaters in 2000 (in Paris. With my mother. And my girlfriend. Adding to the trauma), that I have never even been tempted to see it again, but that is a mark of a very good film that achieves something of real worth. Even with that acknowledgment though, I think BRICK is a better film, it's just so adept at both respecting and playing with the tropes of film noir.
This is the one I’d most like to be wrong about. I think Requiem is the likely winner, but Brick is a film I love and have loved to champion over the years.
Brick, 100%! Liked Aronofsky, loved "Pi" especially, but watching the relentlessly depressing Requiem for a Dream is a tortuous exercise in masochism.
A "one timer" vs. an "any timer" ? Brick it is!