Search - Kronos Quartet :: Requiem for a Dream (2000 Film)

Beautiful, Haunting, and You Can Nod Your Head to It

John | Cleveland, OH | 08/31/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Probably the biggest compliment I can give this Soundtrack is that it is one of two movie soundtracks that I have ever bought. The other was The Godfather. I NEVER get excited enough over a movie's score to go out and buy it. Even if I really like the way it works in the movie, I don't buy it. In fact, under almost NO circumstances do I buy movie soundtracks, they don't usually do anything for me. But I'm being redundant...
When I saw Requiem for a Dream, the very first thing that struck me about it was the music. When I heard "Summer Overture" in the first few minutes of the movie, I loved it. LOVED it. I knew at that moment that I had to buy this soundtrack, and only hoped that they had released one. And that was before I had heard the best parts of the soundtrack, like Lux Aerterna, Meltdown, and Winter Overture. But really all the songs on here are outstanding. Yeah like many people said, they are all pretty short, but really that only makes you like it more. Have you ever seen a movie that you felt ended way too soon, and you wanted to see more of it? Well, that makes you just want to go watch it even more, right? Same with this soundtrack. The fact that the tracks are so excrutiatingly short makes you listen to them over and over. The sound of that violin (you know what I mean if you've heard it) is so haunting, yet so beautiful, and yet again it is so damn catchy! You'll have it stuck in your head for days. You'll be whistling it as you go about your daily routine. I personally often find it stuck in my head while at work, and when I get home I pop this CD in and can't help buy smile as I hear those first sounds of the bass of Summer Overture.... Trust me, buy this and you will NEVER regret it."

The Perfect Memento of the Film

Mr G Bowden | London United Kingdom | 07/01/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It roughly goes: if you like the film, you'll love the soundtrack. Many soundtracks sound great when mixed with the film but feel emotionally empty when simply played on a CD. Other soundtracks, great soundtracks, are able to stand alone from the film and help you to remember those moments from said flick that grabbed you. Listening to Clint Mansell's score for Darren Aronofsky's drug-addled nightmare "Requiem For A Dream", I still get shivers in my remembering the tragic events of the film via Mansell and the Kronos Quartet's wonderful work.Like the film, soundtrack is divided into three parts: Summer, Fall and Winter. Summer contains 15 songs, none of them over three minutes long (Track 10, "High On Life", lasts a full eleven seconds) and all of them bearing ominous warnings for what's to come, key standouts being the tentative "Ghosts Of Things To Come" and the forboding "Hope Overture", the latter being a mixture of strings and beats that wouldn't sound out of place on Bjork's "Homogenic" album. Fall has 9 songs, and it is here where Mansell lays heavier programming onto the Quartet's stuff, as heard on the first track "Cleaning Apartment", and hints at the film's near-insanity at this point with the menacing mounting of "Arnold" and, particularly, "Sara Goldfarb Has Left The Building" (advice: listen to the latter extremely loudly). The Winter section starts with a jolt with the 19 seconds of "Winter Overture", and never lets up. Amongst the insane screams of "The Beginning Of The End" and "Meltdown" (subtle titles if I do say so myself), however, some slower, sadder stuff seeps through, particularly on "Ghosts Of A Future Lost", a theme built throughout the three sections that ends here on an emotional high, and "Lux Aeterna".Mansell and the Quartet are content with using many musical themes throughout the soundtrack, as the distinct string arrangements that begin as early as "Summer Overture" continually reappear throughout the CD. This is also rather more obviously identified in the repetition in titles, examples being "Dreams", "Ghosts" and "Tense". But each track is given a tweak via Mansell's subtle mixing that contrasts with what is essentially the same song that has gone before. As for the congas: well, unless you've seen the film, you won't appreciate them as much as you would by simply listening to them cold (they sound like something Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer would do!) Fan of the film: buy the soundtrack. Fan of diverse new composers: buy the soundtrack."

Excellent Accompaniment to Your Own Dark Dreams

Bruce Kendall | Southern Pines, NC | 06/29/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the spirit of Laurie Anderson and John Cage, Clint Mansell makes his own minimalist statement here. He provides the perfect mentalscape for a movie which twitches and writhes, boogies at times, rolls and gently rocks. Dark night of the soul stuff, but also choppily foreward bound. The main theme is entirely memorable and will be repeating itself in your head for days, weeks, years to come! Kudos of course to the always on the mark Kronos Quartet. What can't these musicians play? If this is your initiation into their music, you must check out their huge output of CDs, everything ranging from traditional African music, baroque, to the most progressive modern composers. They are one of our national treasures! If you're prone to nightmares, however, you might want to play this CD in the light of day, not the really early AM hours. Like the movie, it has a certain fatalistic quality about it. Suicide Hotline soundtrack, perhaps? For that matter, if you're feeling down in the dumps, don't go near the movie, either. It will just convince you that there is no point. Hang it up! But if the life force is with you and you actually enjoy a little melancholy edge now and again, this may very well be your background music!BEK"