Obituaries pre-echoed.

The cinema has a way of collapsing time that can be rather nice, seeing actors we really enjoy looking 20, 30 or 40 years younger - or even Maggie Smith as Desdemona 50 years ago.   But sometimes it can produce a kind of retroactive irony that becomes tragic.    I recently watched Patch Adams, starring Robin Williams with Philip Seymour Hoffman in a supporting role.   Both of them now dead,  both by their own hands, one deliberately, one by accident.     And on Thursday night I watched Sydney Lumet’s film   ‘Before the Devil Knows You're Dead’ and there was Hoffman playing (brilliantly of course)  a heroin user.   Irony bleeds into tragedy.