The Trailer
Style
As in his previous film,
π, Aronofsky uses montages of extremely short shots throughout the film (sometimes termed a hip hop montage). While an average 100-minute film has 600 to 700 cuts,
Requiem features more than 2,000. Split-screen is used extensively, along with extremely tight closeups. Long tracking shots (including those shot with an apparatus strapping a camera to an actor, called the Snorricam) and time-lapse photography are also prominent stylistic devices.
In order to portray the shift from the objective, community-based narrative to the subjective, isolated state of the characters' perspectives, Aronofsky alternates between extreme closeups and extreme distance from the action and intercuts reality with a character's fantasy. Aronofsky aims to subjectivise emotion, and the effect of his stylistic choices is personalisation rather than alienation.
The film's distancing itself from empathy is furthered structurally by the use of intertitles (Summer, Fall, Winter), marking the temporal progress of addiction. The average scene length shortens as the movie progresses (beginning around 90 seconds to two minutes) until the movie's climactic scenes, which are cut together very rapidly (many changes per second) and are accompanied by a score which increases in intensity accordingly. After the climax, there is a short period of serenity, during which idyllic dreams of what may have been are juxtaposed with portraits of the four shattered lives.
Select Film Montages
(the ones that I could find mostly, and they quite were difficult to find, even on YouTube)
Naturally (official)
"Take What's Given" - I'm pretty sure this is fan-made, but you could've fooled me (unofficial)
Epilogue Montage (official)
Sorry, but this video cannot be embedded and you should click it to watch it on Youtube. Very easily the most memorable montage from the film, but its also the ending, so for those who have not yet seen the film,
don't click this link.