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The Regretful Viewer: Memory and Anxiety at the Multiplex
Penélope Cruz and Asier Flores in Pain and Glory (courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) Time carries forward, seemingly interminable, as we plunge into a new decade. But with each new marker, we are reminded that time itself is terrifyingly finite. The unknowable possibility of heaven or hell—or the more likely chance of stark nothingness—looms. With the unnerving fact of human mortality comes mournful reflection of why life transpired as it did, and what could have been—a mood and narrative spark defining part of the cinematic output of 2019. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is centered around two has-beens played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, relics of the Hollywood studio […]
