About a past that never happened, and a future that never happened.

Norval 2022-03-15 09:01:03

There are so many choices in people's life, and the moment we make up our minds, they have changed our life. The movie keeps rewatching moments like if Monty would have washed his hands a few months ago, if he had betrayed his accomplices, if he had pulled the trigger on his betrayal.

It's something he didn't do.

If Monty hadn't gone down the drug road, if he hadn't met his girlfriend, if he hadn't rescued the dog.

This is what he did.

Monty spent the last twenty-four hours constantly reflecting on the choices he had made. He said he shouldn't be greedy about making another money, but he also said that saving his dog was the best thing he'd ever done in his life. Each of us will reflect like this, thinking about what if if if; but the pressure before going to prison has forced him to face his entire life so far: wrong, starting from a certain insignificant deviation, and where he goes from now on. Every step is going astray, is leading to such an ending.

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Saw such a word today: "Hiraeth". The explanation for it is: "Nostalgia for a home that cannot be returned or that did not exist."

Hiraeth.

This is both nostalgia for the "home" that cannot be returned, and nostalgia for the past that cannot be returned.

In this life, once we make the first choice, there is no turning back.

-

“This life came so close to never happen.”

To love life. This kind of life almost doesn't exist anymore.

Such a life could hardly exist.

There are thousands of cause and effect behind the accident, and the world is entangled in it, no one can see it clearly, and no one can escape. The past that did not happen will not happen, and the future that did not happen will not happen. Monty wouldn't run away, his education, the people he met, his character, his ideas, his thoughts, all determined that he wouldn't run away. The "so close" my father imagined was actually a distance of tens of thousands of miles.

They knew that, and they knew it well when they were driving straight to the finish line.

Twenty-four hours have passed, and the twenty-fifth hour has arrived. You have to keep going, you can't go back.

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Another: One of my favorite places in the film.

The people Monty saw on the way to the prison at the end, the people he had cursed and hated, were smiling at him back then. So just before he stepped into another life, all his past was reconciled to him; they were reconciled.

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Extended Reading
  • Westley 2022-03-25 09:01:08

    The finishing touch, Norton's character is very restrained.

  • Rowland 2022-01-26 08:16:48

    Am I making up a lesson, sweat, but this movie has a weird beauty. The Fuck classic is home, and I almost burst into tears in the last 10 minutes.

25th Hour quotes

  • Frank Slaughtery: You know, you're wearing a striped shirt with a striped tie, you know that, right?

    Phelan: Yeah, I do it for the ladies.

    Frank Slaughtery: Oh - the ladies ever tell you that you look like a fucking optical illusion?

    Phelan: Yeah?

    Frank Slaughtery: Go away, disappear... come on.

    Phelan: I'm outta here.

  • [Monty standing in the men's bathroom, talking to himself in a mirror with "FUCK YOU!" written on it]

    Monty Brogan: Yeah, fuck you, too. Fuck *me*? Fuck *you*, Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car - get a fucking job! Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. SLOW THE FUCK DOWN! Fuck the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from! Fuck the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother fuckers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for FUCKING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break! Tyco! Worldcom! Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst fuckin' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats, trying to audition for "The Sopranos." Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermès scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart! Fuck the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the fuck on! Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, fuck J.C.! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in fuckin' Otisville, J.! Fuck Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! Fuck Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. Fuck Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. Fuck Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, fucking bitch. Fuck my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers. Fuck this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to fucking ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place.

    [pause]

    Monty Brogan: No. No, fuck you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you *dumb* *fuck*!