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There are a number of stylistic and technical elements that Aronofsky favors throughout his body of work. Most
notable among these are the hip hop montage, and more generally the frenetic editing pace, but these alone are not enough to
accurately describe Aronofsky’s unique visual style.
The most powerful motif present in both Pi and Requiem for a Dream is that of isolation – both
films present fragmented, visually confused versions of reality which center around individual characters. Many of Aronofsky’s
stylistic choices are a means towards this end. For example, in trying to establish a subjective, first person perspective
for his characters, Aronofsky uses numerous POV shots, such as the frame below, which shows Max’s view of Chinatown as he walks
down the street. In these shots the camera is constantly assaulted by faces rising out of the crowd, and it glances nervously
towards the sky – effectively, it puts us inside Max’s head.
The most powerful of them these tools of isolation is the "Snorri-cam," named after a pair of photographers who first
pioneered the technique of attaching the camera to a subject, in order to frame them directly in the shot, and move their surroundings
to the background. In both Pi and Requiem, Aronofsky attaches a camera to his actors. By centering the action on a single
subject, the Snorri-cam provides a powerfully subjective point of view. Instead of having an actor pass through a space, this setup
allows Aronofsky to have space flow around the actor, as depicted below.
Not every scene can contain only one actor, however. Interactions between characters are often centrally important in
creating the feeling of isolation, especially in Requiem for a Dream, in which the story centers on not one, but four characters.
In situations such as these, Aronofsky often likes to utilize a split screen to demonstrate to the audience that his actors are isolated,
even when they are in close company. For example, in the frame below, Jared Leto and Jennifer Connolly are lying in bed, facing each other,
and talking. By splitting the screen right down the middle and moving one frame slightly on the vertical, Aronofsky separates the pair:
when Leto reaches across to touch Connolly’s face, his hand appears at a different point on her side of the screen. This technique
emphasizes the very existential sense of isolation that pervades both of these films.
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