Requiem for a Dream — Characters & Cast

To be seen and liked: to be somebody. Underneath it, to have her son look at her with pride again and to feel that her life still contains a future.

A lonely Brighton Beach widow whose days are structured around a television game show. A phone call suggesting she may appear on it gives her a purpose, a goal (the red dress) and, through a diet doctor, a prescription. She moves from touching hopefulness to jittery euphoria to full amphetamine psychosis, ending institutionalized — the film's most complete destruction, and the one with the most respectable paperwork behind it.

To make enough money to give Marion her shop, to buy his mother a new television, and to become the man both of them already believe he could be.

Introduced pawning his mother's television for a fix, Harry nonetheless loves both her and Marion sincerely. His plan to buy weight and build a stake is briefly, seductively successful, which is what dooms him: success funds escalation. As his supply collapses and his arm rots, his ambitions shrink to the next dose, and he ends up on an operating table far from home.

Autonomy — her own store, her own designs, a life not funded or defined by her parents — and, more immediately, the feeling of being loved and chosen.

A well-off young woman with genuine talent and a distant family, Marion begins with the most concrete future of anyone in the film — sketches, a business plan, Harry's backing. Her descent is the most transactional: as the supply dries up, she pays in increments of herself, each rationalized as the last, until she is unrecognizable to the woman in her own mirror.

To become the somebody his mother promised he would be, and to get himself and Harry out.

Harry's best friend and business partner, the most practical and arguably the most decent of the four. His plan is an exit from the neighborhood, but a street shooting, a police sweep and a Southern prison sentence make him the character punished most by systems rather than chemistry — his withdrawal endured on a work detail while he retreats into a memory of his mother's arms.

To sell — a diet, a philosophy, a promise of transformation with no delivery date.

Barely a character and entirely a force: the relentlessly grinning host of Sara's beloved program, preaching a gospel of self-improvement, juice and enthusiasm. He does not develop; he simply escalates, migrating from inside the television into Sara's apartment and finally into her mind, presiding over her collapse like a game-show master of ceremonies.