Sound of a bad Dream

Original music scores are rarely notable for anything but an Oscar category that most people fall asleep for. Usually they end up only making strong arguments against the commercialization of trance music: Search for the themes to Braveheart, Star Wars or even Terminator 2 on Napster, and then make your raver friends hang their heads in shame.

The soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's unflinchingly brilliant drug nightmare Requiem for a Dream, however, is an experience itself: a sweeping, pulsing descent into the haunted landscape of a strung-out hell on earth.

Arranger Clint Mansell also gave us the heady electronic rush of Aronofsky's Pi soundtrack; hopefully, the budding f claiming the great director crown. That step being a Batman prequel, Mansell seems like the perfect man for a job that even Prince failed-providing a soundscape to match the Dark Knight's aura. His score calls up lucid, squeamish images from the harrowing film; still, its effect operates independently of the movie itself. Aiding Mansell in his dream-weaving is the Kronos Quartet, who are as close to badass as any string section will ever come.

The soundtrack is divided, like the film, into three sections: summer, fall and winter. Summer introduces the major orchestral themes, weaving the tensely seductive central melody around a lurking synthesizer that seems to seep up from the unconscious. The strings are beautiful and the moments of silence ache, even as an ominous claustrophobia hints at panic. There is excitement and humor interspersed with the dread, in frenzied techno party tracks and a cringe-inducing conga interlude that sounds like Gloria Estefan possessed by Satan. Fall finds these themes drifting in and out and colliding with each other amid a foreboding ambience. The winter climax strings all the separate themes together in a nightmarish crescendo of walls of sonic agony and sharp jabs of electronic pain. The intensity recalls a smacked-out version of Psycho, with a drug-crazed Norman Bates pawning off his mother's TV for another fix before grabbing the knife.

Finally, the nightmare ends on the beach of Coney Island, with the sounds of waves and pier cathartic to the wearied ear. Like the film itself, the Requiem For A Dream score is taxing to your psyche, but a journey that is worth it.