hat's Darren Aronofsky going to do next? That question has
been asked countless times since 1998 among independent film buffs, science
fiction fans, horror fans and, believe it or not, students of Jewish
mysticism. When you consider that writer/director Aronofsky's hit feature
debut Pi concerns the plight of Max (Sean Gullette), a mathematical
genius whose work may hold the key to predicting the international stock
market and might also reveal the True Name of God, such a diverse audience
base makes sense. Pi, a deeply disturbing exploration of paranoia and
obsession, was made by Aronofsky for a mere $60,000, and netted him the
1998 Director's Award at Sundance, The Open Palm at IFP Gotham, an IFP/West
Spirit Award for best first screenplay and an Excellence in Filmmaking
award from the National Board of Review.
His sophomore effort is an adaptation of Hubert (Last Exit to
Brooklyn) Selby Jr.'s 1978 novel, Requiem for a Dream. The movie
is a sensory overload, full of split-screens and digital effects,
rapid-fire editing, makeup effects and overwhelming sound design. But
these are not gimmicks. Aronofsky uses them to obliterate our sense of
distance from his four main characters--Sarah (played by Ellen Burstyn, who
has got to win the Oscar ® for this movie), Harry (Jared Leto),
Tyrone (Marlon Wayans) and Marion (Jennifer Connelly)--each of whom descends
into a pit of addiction. Aronofsky creates a greater "otherworldliness"
than is typically found in movies that are explicitly labeled science fiction or
horror. Brooklyn streets and apartments become full of hallucinations and
terror, and Aronofsky shows us up close the spiritual disintegrations, the
loneliness and despair, that bring about the hallucinations and terror.
Science Fiction Weekly talked to Aronofsky in Cambridge, Mass., just a stone's
throw from his alma mater, Harvard University.
In both Pi and Requiem for a Dream, there seem to be two
distinct narratives going on at any given moment. You have your basic
plot-line, of course, and there's also a narrative you create that's
parallel to the main narrative that you tell stylistically--through
editing, camerawork, special effects and sound effects. Your stylistic
narratives seem better developed than the full-blown narratives of a lot of
mainstream movies. What are the challenges of balancing these two parallel
narratives, of making sure one doesn't overwhelm the other?
Aronofsky: That's a good question ... because that's exactly
the challenge--trying to balance the two. I think the stylistic narrative
hopefully comes out of the main narrative, [and] that you're stylistically trying
to support it. Me and Mattie [Matthew Libatique], my director of
photography, call what we're doing "expressionism," where we're
taking the emotion of the characters and the emotion of the themes of the
story, and trying to figure out visual ways to express them.
Is the Snorri-Cam [a camera that is attached to the actor's body
and keeps the actor in focus and makes the background blurred] your best
tool for doing that?
Aronofsky: I don't know if it's our best tool, but I like the tool;
I think it's a lot of fun. It's a subjective camera that
basically locks the camera in the center of the frame and makes the
background all shaky and separates the character from their environment.
So it gives you this really, really subjective feel. I really like
using that rig.
Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream is wearing pounds and
pounds of latex makeup appliances, and she's photographed in some scenes
in direct sunlight. I'm thinking of one scene in particular where she's
among her fellow Brooklyn yentas, and they are all lined up working on
their tans along the sidewalk in front of their apartment building. The
makeup looks faultless. None of the prosthetics' seams show. Could you
discuss Ms. Burstyn's work in the film, both in terms of the technical
difficulties, and in terms of directing her performance?
Aronofsky: Here's a 67-year-old actress--67 years old!--who went
through four hours of
prosthetics a day. She had four prosthetic necks [to make her neck seem
flabby and then emaciated] that she wore throughout the film. Two "fat"
suits [to make her look overweight, one weighing 40 pounds, the other
20]. Nine different wigs. I can't begin to tell you how much makeup
work she went through, and all the different dresses she wore [created by
costume designer Laura Jean Shannon]. She just sees all the technical
difficulties as part of the craft. She's totally a dramatic artist; she's
an amazing, amazing artist. It was an unbelievable gift to work with her.
I think the best thing I've ever been involved in was having the honor of
capturing on film her performance in this movie. I think she really just
rocks it out of the park. I'm really, really happy with her work in this
movie.
Did you "sweeten" the makeup with digital effects to hide some of
the seams on Ms. Burstyn's prosthetics and wigs?
Aronofsky: No, we were just very conscious of the limitations of
the prosthetics on the set, and we were just trying to construct moves to
make her makeup look faultless. It's amazing, because wearing
those prosthetic necks is like acting with one of those neck braces on that
you get after you've been in a car accident. That's how stiff they are.
You might be able to move your neck in them, but weird creases are created
in the prosthetics that look unnatural. She really had to limit her
actions. There was one shot where we've got a split screen, and she's
looking at the fridge, and the camera is zooming into her, and the camera
is also zooming into the fridge. While we were filming, you could see the
line created in the prosthetic--it was clear as day, along the side of her
neck. And I said, "Ellen, we have a problem. The crease is showing right
there. Can you do something?" And she said, "Well... what about this?"
And she lifted up her hand like this [in a gesture of emotional distress in
front of her neck] and then she turned her hand into a character and her
hand is blocking the crease in the shot. She was able to work within the
limitations of the makeup. It was difficult for all of us, but were able
to overcome it.
Both Requiem for a Dream and Pi are about the real and
the unreal bleeding into each other. In Pi, you have Max's
mathematical reality colliding with the mundane world; in Requiem,
you have the dreams of the four main characters (Sarah, Harry, Tyrone and
Marion) colliding with reality. Are you attracted to that blurring? And
do you think reality is inherently fragile?
Aronofsky: Definitely! That's totally, exactly what I've been
trying to do. When you walk down the street, you're really not just
walking down the street. You're thinking about your conversation with your
mom from four hours ago. You're thinking about the vacation you're going
to take with your girlfriend in three weeks. You're in different places,
and I find that is the most interesting thing that separates
filmmaking from theater--that you can drift off into the
imagination, into surrealism. That is what I'm fascinated about in
filmmaking now--that question of "What is reality, and what is the
subjective reality?"
I was wondering, was there a conscious quoting on your part, in
both Pi and Requiem for a Dream, of Roman Polanski? Both Max's
and Sarah's mental disintegrations in their apartments are a lot like
Catherine Deneuve's disintegration in Polanski's Repulsion.
Aronofsky: Yeah, I'm a big fan of Repulsion. I think we
watched Repulsion before we did Pi. I think Polanski is a master of
subjective filmmaking. Repulsion is so masterfully done as far as
subjective filmmaking, as is Rosemary's Baby. Roman Polanski
is great, and I've definitely learned a lot from him.
What about Polanski's The Tenant?
Aronofsky: I like The Tenant, too. I think it's so funny
when he jumps out the window ... twice! I don't think it's as successful as
Repulsion, but there's some really creepy, wonderful moments in
it.
Some your more interesting shots in Requiem for a Dream seem
to quote the work of a number of painters. I'm thinking of Edward Hopper
and Magritte. There's a couple of shots that look like the work of Caspar
David Friedrich. During preproduction, did you refer to art books for
visual quotes, or as a means to set a visual tone?
Aronofsky: We didn't quote any of those guys, but I know who
you're talking about. A big influence was Goya. Have you ever been to The
Prado [Museum], in Madrid? It's a really amazing experience, because you
walk around upstairs and you see all of Goya's early paintings, these huge
murals. And they're actually named after the seasons, which is kind of
weird, too, just the way our film is. [Requiem is broken up into
different "Acts": "Summer," "Fall," and "Winter."] Goya would have this huge
mural, about the size of a conference room wall, called "Summer," and
there'd be people playing in a field and on pogo sticks. And then he has
"Fall," and then "Winter." And everyone's happy and it's just lovely. And
then, when he went deaf in his later years, he lived alone and he made
these paintings called the "Black Paintings" on these walls. And have you
ever seen his painting of Saturn devouring his child? That was one of
them. That sort of descent, of the experience of walking around the Prado,
was a big influence for me and my director of photography. The way Goya's
career evolved is how we wanted our film to evolve. Nan Goldman was a big
influence, too. And there were a lot of Japanese photographers that are
out there right now that were an influence, some of the more obscure
ones.
Have you formally studied Jewish mysticism? Have you read Lurianic
Kabbalah?
Aronofsky: Not really. When I went to Israel, I did one of
those crash courses on Judaism, and there was a lot of Kabbalah in it, and
that got my mind sparked. And then when I started writing Pi, I met
with a lot of leading Kabbalah scholars who were passing by through New
York, where I was living at the time. I got a lot of tidbits and
information. They not were not like the Kabbalah Center guys--not into the
sort of mainstream crossover Kabbalah. These guys were the kind of mystics
who were pretty hard-core.
In a lot of ways, both Pi and Requiem for a Dream are about personal
apocalypses (to borrow a phrase from critic Phil Nutman). Is there
anything in your experience that attracts you to this kind of theme of the
worlds of individual people ending? And if there is not anything in your
personal experience, then is there something from the body of films and
literature that you cite as influences?
Aronofsky: I don't know why I've been attracted to that material.
I think I'm a pretty happy kid. You know ... my parents are still married.
I had a normal upbringing. I was never a drug addict of any significant
kind of drug beyond being addicted to the American dream and to
television--and maybe being addicted to work and procrastination. I'm not
sure why. I really don't know. Ever since I was a teenager, I was reading
existentialists. I've just always been attracted to that sort of theme.
The five major characters in your two films--Max, Sarah, Harry,
Tyrone and Marion--are all profoundly missing something in their lives.
How do you film absence?
Aronofsky: Oh, wow ... ! How do you film absence? Requiem
for a Dream is totally about absence. It's about "the hole."
Ultimately, Requiem for a Dream is about the lengths people go to
escape their reality. And when they escape their reality, they create this
hole in their present, and will do anything to fill that hole. I think you
describe absence, and the hole, by describing the boundaries that construct
it. That's how you show negative space, by showing the framework that
supports it. Negative space is what you don't see.
Okay, now what about the question everyone is asking: What's going
on with your possibly filming an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic
novel, Batman: Year One?
Aronofsky: Nothing's green-lit. We've been talking to Warner
Brothers for a long time. It looks like me and Frank Miller are going to
write a draft, and then we'll see what happens. I'm also writing an
original science fiction film that I've been working on for about 10
months with my roommate from college, a guy named Ari Handle. It's an
original science fiction film that we've been writing, and we're going to
set it up soon. We're going to push everything forward, and see what
happens first.
And speaking of Frank Miller, what about your reported plans to
adapt his graphic novel, Ronin?
Aronofsky: Ronin--we're still developing it a little bit.
We're still more focused on the Batman project , but hopefully
Ronin will get going at some point, too.
And what about Proteus, the submarine thriller to which
you've reportedly been attached?
Aronofsky: Proteus is actually happening. I'm not going to
direct it. I'm going to produce it with Eric Watson, my producing partner.
We'll be producing it in partnership with Dimension films. And David
Twohy, the guy who wrote and directed Pitch Black, is going to direct
it. I think that's going through soon; it should be a lot of fun.
