Americans Are Living in an Alternate History

There’s a certain kind of movie that lets you down not because it’s bad, but because it could have been great. One of those movies, for me, is Sliding Doors. The 1998 rom-com has a “philosophical” premise and a double timeline: As its poster asks, “What if one split second sent your life in two completely different directions?” In the first timeline, Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow) gets fired from her job and returns home to her boyfriend—just in time to discover him cheating on her. In the second, Helen misses her train, by one split second, and therefore remains unaware of the infidelity. The two plots—two possibilities—unfurl; in the process, age-old questions about contingency and destiny are answered by way of Hallmarkian melodrama. Like I said: It could have been great. It isn’t.

So I was unprepared when, watching again recently, I found myself absolutely wrecked by the viewing. The movie’s perky setup was agonizing; its cheerful toggling between Helen’s two fates felt painful to witness. Because when I watched the movie this time around—in the midst of a global pandemic that , with no end in sight—I wasn’t just thinking of Helen’s divergent futures. I was thinking of everyone else’s. proposition, and in the paradigm of the alternate history. Our news is doubly haunted: by the horror of real loss, and by the shadow of what might have been.