We grew up singing about how the wheels on the bus go 'round and 'round. We played ring-around-the-rosey. Circles meant pies, Skittles, and polka dots. The Lion King taught us about the Circle of Life.

Well, welcome to The Lost Weekend, which will teach you about the Circle of Death. Yeah: circles in this flick are bleak.

When Don visits Nat's bar for the first time, he speaks about his strange fascination with circles, especially those little condensation rings left by drinks.

Check it out:

DON: Don't wipe it away, Nat. Let me have my little vicious circle. You know, the circle is the perfect geometric figure. No end; no beginning.

Is he drunk? Well, yes—of course he's shmammered—but is he serious? Why is he so amped about seeing rings on a bar?

For our money, this is related to the concept of the addiction cycle. Don later describes his drunken benders as "merry-go-rounds" that he must ride around, and around, and around, and…

You get the point. Like circular rings of condensation, Don's benders have "no beginning and no end."

The film compounds this symbolism through its visual depiction of these condensation rings. When we first cut away from Don at the bar, we see a shot of several of these rings linked together neatly, their lines clear and distinct. This represents the feeling Don gets after just a few drinks, when his charm and mental facilities are jacked up 900%.

When we return to the scene, however, the circles are mess—there are way more than before, this time scattered in a seemingly random pattern, the lines made by the moisture muddled and smeared. This represents the feeling Don gets after many drinks, when his formerly booze-laden bliss gives way to base sloppiness.

But hey—Don knows better than anyone that it's all just part of the cycle.