The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters’ imprisonment in a world of delusion and reckless desperation that is subsequently overtaken and devastated by reality.
The film charts three seasons in the lives of Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), her son Harry (Jared Leto), Harry’s girlfriend Marion Silver (Jennifer Connelly), and Harry’s friend Tyrone C. Love (Marlon Wayans).
The story begins in summer; Sara Goldfarb, an elderly widow living alone in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, spends her time watching infomercials hosted by Tappy Tibbons (Christopher McDonald).
After a phone call announces that she will be invited to be a participant on a game show, she becomes obsessed with regaining the youthful appearance she possesses in a photograph from Harry's graduation, her proudest moment. In order to fit into her old red dress, the favorite of her deceased husband Seymour, she begins taking a regimen of prescription weight-loss amphetamine pills throughout the day and a sedative at night. Despite Harry’s warnings about amphetamine addiction, she passionately insists that the chance to be on television has given her a reason to live. When her invitation does not arrive over the fall, she increases her dosage but begins suffering from amphetamine psychosis, hallucinating that she is the principal subject of the game show and that her refrigerator is a menacing, living monster. Wikipedia