Great review on The 405.
It is indeed this cynicism and opportunistic Pop culture references that prove why Glossary of Broken Dreams is a film of its time: hypermodernity is well represented by both its form and context, allowing for a very familiar disenchantment to echo throughout — the more the film advances, the more you realise you’re trapped in a loop of needs and wants to which you respond so automatically that you don’t even notice your own sense of combativeness itself is being used by the system you claim to position yourself against as a tool of self-propaganda. And the beat goes on — to quote Sonny and Cher — without you having an effective saying in what becomes of your future or your dreams (be them collective or individual), the only soulagement coming from the consolation prize that is being aware of the self-destruction process — part of it, at least.
This is not a militant movie, although I must confess that the image of a random MAGA supporter who happened to stumble upon it shouting “communist propaganda!” as they salivate from the mouth amuses me; after all, Glossary of Broken Dreams lives up to its title and destroys each and every hope of collective redemption — it even questions the ongoing relevance of the Left, deromanticising the last socio-political myth standing.