The waffle guy

I went to watch Rosetta yesterday. Needed to chill out after an epic night battle trying to come out with an ISM outline, which I duly submitted at 5am sharp. Nonetheless, I'm wondering how would a 2000 word outline fit into a supposing 5000 word essay. Oh well, that will be a problem for another day.

Anyway Rosetta was one of those M1 fringe fest films that has a rather bittersweet ending. Rosetta, to begin with, belongs to one of those lower class jobless citizens caught in the backwaters of the French (or maybe Belgium? I can't really deduce it from the film) industrial complex. Living in a crap caravan with an alcoholic mum, she is basically moving from point to point trying to grab a decent job, and hopefully some meaning in life.

So the film is bitter (and maybe boring) in the sense that the director is super excessive on Rosetta's really routine and mundane life. Half way during the film we really questioned if the director had simply ran out of ideas to show any sign of progress in his narrative. Interestingly, everytime Rosetta is going crazy looking for a job, the camera (which I suspect uses some sort of a prime lens) will trace her movements in a really jerky manner but stabilizes once she finds back some sort of rhythm in her life (that comes with a job). Either the director is really pushing his image stabilizer mode, or he is conveying a message of how meaningless we are in this lousy capitalist system.

But the film is sweet in the sense that Rosetta finally cried at the end of the show. Throughout the film, she is just this stone cold girl who moves from point A to B and to C in a viscious cycle trying to get a job, showing no emotions whatsoever to the waffle guy who really loves her (but really sucks in pleasing her), and trying to get her mom out of her alcoholic addiction. Towards the end of the film, she wants to kill herself and her mom (who is knocked out by alcohol) by gassing themselves with the kerosene tank. It is really eery that she does it in such an impassionate and methodological manner. However, in true blue down and out fasion, the tank runs out of gas halfway and she has to get out of the caravan to get a new tank to gas herself and mom. And the film ends (really abruptly) at the part when she drops the new tank at the door and broke down in tears.

Oh well, maybe the film spoke to my friend more than it spoke to me, or maybe vice versa, I don't know. Not that I have an alcoholic mom, but perhaps it does show how meanings in life can be lost while we are searching for some sort of an end-point? I mean, we often hear the usual story that 'meanings' are found in the 'process', or 'journey', and not the goal in itself per se. But I think sometimes we do drift too much in the process searching for a reason in life. I guess I don't mind having some clear end-points now; it is kind of dreary that at the age of 24, I haven't really figure out what I really want in life. Or maybe I do know what I want, but it is just kind of denied by circumstances, or maybe denied by my lack of courage, character and charisma?

Perhaps that is one of the few things that I hope God can show me in this season of Lent. Just a glimpse will do, of what He wants out of me. At this point in time, it is kind of a blank. Still, I think there is much freedom in drifting in an aimless state. Perhaps it gives me the space to do crazy things. I mean, life kinda shows a lot of potential when one has nothing to lose. But of course it must be 'controlled craziness', within God's moral paradigm. I won't gas myself.

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I think today's worship really spoke to me. Esp the song that has something about "saving lost souls" or something like that. I can't remember the lyrics. I think there are friends out there who need to know Jesus.