He knew that henceforth, all his days would resemble one another, and bring him equal suffering. And he saw the weeks, months and years gloomily and implacably awaiting him, coming one after the other to fall upon him and gradually smother him.

When there is no hope in the future, the present appears atrociously bitter.

Was he crying now because, for the first time in his life, he was feeling what it must be like to face a tomorrow without any future?

Thus does the unyielding, inescapable future ineluctably devour the present.

The past was gone and the future had yet to unfold, and he knew he should focus his life on the present...yet his day-to-day existence suddenly struck him as endless and unbearable.

To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame.

The future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments.

A horribly bitter taste came into his mouth: the futility of everything, the eternal pain of existence.

The movie, as everyone knows, is about a man who finds himself living the same day over and over and over again. He is the only person in his world who knows this is happening, and after going through periods of dismay and bitterness, revolt and despair, suicidal self-destruction and cynical recklessness, he begins to do something that is alien to his nature. He begins to learn.

Learn, he says, that there will be hours, days
and months ahead of feeling absolutely terrible
and nothing can change that; neither new
girlfriends, health professionals, changes of diet, dope, humility, or
God.

Tomorrow will be like today. Life wastes itself whilst we are preparing to live.

Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. When alone he had a dreadful and distressing desire to call someone, but he knew beforehand that with others present it would be still worse.

His whole future seemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless emptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever to happen.

Lorsque l'avenir est sans espoir, le présent prend une amertume ignoble.