Sticky Thoughts and the Chance to Begin Again

Spoiler warning: This reflection discusses major plot points from the film The Drama.

I recently watched The Drama, starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as Charlie and Emma, an engaged couple preparing for their wedding.

While watching it, I wasn’t sure how I felt. The subject matter is complicated and uncomfortable. But I kept thinking about the film afterward, particularly its treatment of sticky thoughts and the possibility of beginning again.

Early in the film, Charlie and Emma are at a wedding tasting with their best friends. The friends reveal that before getting married, they told each other the worst things they had ever done.

Charlie and Emma decide to do the same.

Charlie goes first. Emma then reveals that when she was 15, she planned a school shooting, although she never carried it out.

Charlie can’t let it go.

Does he really know the woman he is about to marry? What does something she contemplated at 15 say about who she is now?

I often talk with clients about sticky thoughts—the ones our minds grab onto and revisit repeatedly. We replay a conversation or a mistake. We worry about what might happen. We keep turning over the same question, hoping that one more round of thinking will finally give us certainty.

Sometimes thinking helps. Other times, it just gives us more to think about.

Emma’s revelation is extreme and deserves serious consideration. I don’t think Charlie should simply stop thinking about it, and the film isn’t asking us to believe that the past doesn’t matter.

But the question gradually takes over. It changes how he sees Emma, their relationship, and their future. Eventually, the wedding reception falls apart.

At the end of the film, after the wedding reception, Charlie and Emma meet at a diner as they had originally planned, still wearing their wedding clothes. Emma introduces herself, and they begin talking as if they are meeting for the first time.

I found that scene hopeful.

Beginning again doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t resolve every question, either. It simply recognizes that after everything that has already occurred, there is still another moment—and we have some choice about what we do with it.

This is one of the things I appreciate about mindfulness practice. Our attention wanders. Once we notice, we return. We don’t get the lost moments back. We begin again from where we are.

The same possibility exists after an argument, a disappointment, a mistake, or a long stretch spent tangled in our own thoughts.

We can’t rewrite what happened. But we can still ask: What now?