# **Movie Essay: Between Reality and Fiction**

I’ve been planning on writing this for a while and I’m happy to finally have the time to put the idea into words. Though the free time is a result of me not having to work due to a medical scare I had during the beginning of the year. But all must come to an end in some way, even sickness and medical bills.

The subject of this piece is two films. If you’ve watched them, you’ll likely see the red thread tying them together quite early on. If not, I’ll attempt summaries that do their plots justice. That said, if you want to watch the movies before reading, definitely do that.

**[Memories of Murder (2003)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0353969/)** directed by **Bong Joon-ho** and **[Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7131622/)** directed by **Quentin Tarantino** are the names of the films we’ll be talking about.

**_Memories of Murder_** focuses on a small town in South Korea. It’s a murder mystery, procedural in structure but existential in weight. It doesn’t follow just one protagonist, but it largely centers on a small-town detective, one who is sometimes incompetent, often out of his depth, and always reaching for something just out of reach.

My recommendation: watch it in its **original Korean audio with subtitles**, rather than the English dub. Much of the atmosphere lives in the **tone and cadence of the language**.

**_Once Upon a Time in Hollywood_** is set at the turning point between two cinematic eras: the death of the **[spaghetti western](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western)** and the rise of action movies. (*Spaghetti westerns, by the way, are Westerns directed by Italian-American filmmakers, an oddly specific but enduringly amusing label.*)

The film follows actor Rick Dalton and his long-time stuntman Cliff Booth, played by **Leonardo DiCaprio** and **Brad Pitt** respectively, as Dalton navigates a mid-life crisis and tries to resurrect his dwindling career. It’s a film as much about **friendship and fading glory** as it is about **Hollywood’s self-mythologizing**.

These are the initial premises of the two movies, but what lies beneath them, what coils just below the surface of their respective plots, is a shared meditation on **time**, **failure**, and the **hunger for resolution** in a world that rarely grants it.

In _Memories of Murder_, we watch as the investigation drags on over years. The detectives’ methods become increasingly desperate, their confidence eroding until all that’s left is frustration. The murderer, at least when the film was released, remained unidentified.

> The horror isn’t in what’s shown; it’s in what’s **never found**.

The film ends not with closure, but with a long, searching gaze into the camera. As if to say: *this could be anywhere. This could be anyone.* Bong Joon-ho doesn’t resolve the story; he deposits it into your hands.

_Once Upon a Time in Hollywood_ does something inverse. Tarantino rewrites the past. He takes a cultural scar—the **[Manson murders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manson_Family)**—and reshapes it into a pulp fantasy. In his version, the killers get what they deserve, and Sharon Tate lives. It’s a **cinematic hug**. A **warm hallucination**.

Rather than confronting trauma, he mollifies it. The film bathes in **nostalgia**, but also in **yearning**. Tarantino doesn’t undo the past, he **comforts** it.

### **So what binds these films?**

Both are obsessed with **time**.

- _Memories of Murder_ is **haunted** by it.
- _Once Upon a Time in Hollywood_ tries to **rewrite** it.

One ends in a **cul-de-sac of despair**, the other in a **cul-de-sac of hope**.
But both understand that people,whether detectives or actors, are often chasing something impossible:

> Justice.
> Recognition.
> Closure.
> Meaning.

These aren’t tidy pursuits. They’re messy, slow, unresolved.

I chose to write about these films not just because they’re masterpieces, but because they speak to **how cinema interfaces with reality**.

- One film lets **reality bleed in** until it stains everything.
- The other holds reality at bay and builds a **shimmering mirage** over it.

One ends with a breathless **question**.
The other with a sigh of **relief**.

But both know that **storytelling** is how we **survive time**.

### **And maybe that’s the truth that cinema, at its most honest, leaves us with:**

That we don’t watch to escape reality, but to **reframe** it.
We don’t sit in the dark because we’re lost, but because sometimes, the **light we need only arrives when everything else is dimmed**.

In _Memories of Murder_, truth remains elusive. The case goes cold, but the ache stays hot. The faces age. The fields overgrow. Time doesn’t forgive, **it forgets.**

> Bong Joon-ho doesn’t give us catharsis. He offers **ambiguity**.

In _Once Upon a Time in Hollywood_, fantasy overwrites fact like a second draft too beautiful to reject. Tarantino asks: "*What if pain could be edited out?*" Not erased, but softened. What if the world had let the heroes win, just once?

These films, on the surface, are nothing alike. But beneath, they share an emotional **geology**.

One sedimented with doubt.
The other paved with longing.

They don’t offer the same answers, but they do ask the same question:

> **What do we do with the things that didn’t end the way they should have?**

And so, sitting there, half-watching, half-waiting, more patient than I wanted to be, I realized I wasn’t reaching for resolution. I was reaching for **resonance**.

For something that said: *this uncertainty has shape*.

*This discomfort can be held.*
Not solved, just held.

Because sometimes, the best films don’t end.
They just **stop**.

> Not with a final period, but a semicolon;
> A space that suggests continuation.

And maybe that’s the best we can do with our own unresolved narratives,hold the pause, cherish the breath between moments, and find beauty in the not-quite-finished. Or we can take what has been deposited into our hands and begin coloring in the lines, building off a rich foundation of narrative and lore alike.

So yes, this is a **movie essay**(i think).
But really, it’s about watching the world slip by through **celluloid and silence**, about feeling seen by stories that don’t promise endings, only echoes.

It’s about the human need to **connect dots** even when they scatter.
About [**meaning**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_(philosophy)), not as a destination, but as a direction.

And if you’re reading this now, maybe you too have sat quietly with your own version of unanswered questions. Maybe you’ve watched a film not for what it says, but for how it made your silence feel less lonely.