There’s a moment in The Drama that has stuck with me. In the midst of an existential spiral about his fiancée Emma’s (Zendaya) past, Charlie (Robert Pattinson) talks with some less-than-understanding friends and tries to somehow contextualize and produce empathy for her actions. He latches onto something he heard in passing about Emma’s childhood: that she had a neighbor who died in a car accident. The way that he retells the story, though, makes it sound as though this event was a traumatic origin story that totally reshaped her young psyche—even enough to explain her turn toward fantasies of violence later in childhood.
As Charlie retells the story, images flash on the screen imagining different versions of the event; the car crashing into a tree in a neighborhood; young Emma watching the crash firsthand; Emma grieving alone with no one to help her process it.
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