rosetta (jean-pierre dardenne & Luc dardenne, 1999)
“Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You found a job. I found a job. You've got a friend. I've got a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You won't fall in a rut. I won't fall in a rut. Good night. Good night.”
I’m going to introduce a new verb here. It’s ‘to fitzcarraldo’. It’s a transitive verb, so it needs an object. You fitzcarraldo someone, or someone gets/becomes fitzcarraldoed.
It’s to be caught at a point where no course of action is easier than any other. It’s not the same as ‘stranded’ because that suggests that there’s no way out. On the contrary, there are clear ways out when you get fitzcarraldoed, it’s just that all of them are going to be difficult. There are no easy choices.
For example: I was in Iceland a while back, Vi∂ey Island to be specific. If you ever go to Vi∂ey Island you can recreate this moment. Go to the old school house. Stand on the path, with the old school house to your left, and look dead ahead. You’ll see a long path going off into the distance. Then look to your right. You’ll see wasteland.
When I was stood here I looked up the path and then over at the wasteland and I decided that I wanted to walk into the wasteland because I wanted to know what was there: did it end in a cliff, a beach, something else? So I set off.
Now here’s the thing, that wasteland is all kinds of difficult. I don’t exactly know what it is, but the ground both rises up and sinks away. So one moment you’ll need to find purchase on something roughly two feet above ground level, and then your next step will take you around two feet below ground level. Up and down. I hope that makes sense. Basically, one step is very high, and then the next is very low, and so on and so forth. It means you don’t get anywhere very quickly. I kept on going and eventually my travelling companion turned and said “You’ve fitzcarraldoed me again.” Drum rolls. Curtain falls. Everybody laughs.
But recently I’ve been thinking, what’s with my aversion to the path?
I guess the problem is that it’s boring. It’s paved or gravelled, and you know where it’s going. Plus everyone walks on the path. And when you all walk on the same path, you all see and experience the same things. So if you stray from the path you get the opportunity to find and experience different things.
This might sound a little bit like I scorn people who walk on the path. And yes, yes I do. I’ll hold my hands up to that one. But it’s not really about that. It’s not about pointing at people and saying what they don’t do. It’s about me wanting to find something different. Something you don't normally find.
If you know me well then you’ll probably know that I fitzcarraldo pretty much everything. I get myself into unusual situations and plough into them so that there is no easy way out. It generally comes down to a question of continuing or giving up. Both are difficult. I normally continue.
But sometimes it’s important to know when to give up.
People will say lovely things to you: ‘keep at it,’ ‘you can do this,’ ‘they’ll break before you do,’ and so on and so forth. Words are lovely. But sometimes they’re simply not true. Sometimes you have to look at what you want, what you’re trying to do, and have a serious conversation with yourself. Do I continue? Or do I give up?
You don’t experience these questions on the path. The path is created to make your journey simple and smooth. The path is there to remove this kind of self questioning. That’s why it exists. That’s why people follow it. Who needs all that internal noise?
But step away from the path and everything becomes more exciting. You quicken your pace to avoid an oncoming car. It sounds its horn but there’s nothing surprising about this. You continue and make your way over a barrier, over a wall, over a fence. These kind of obstructions don’t mean anything to you, they only mean something to people who create unassailable obstacles in their mind. But your mind is clean and clear and crisp and angry and young and determined. Sometimes it all gets too much and you start to consider the possibility of ending it all, of putting a stop to everything, but that decision is difficult, and continuing is difficult, and by this point you’ve fallen into the habit of persisting in the face of difficulty until your body cries out and screams at you and your mind loses the distinction between what is right and wrong so much so that you’re simply not sure anymore and there is no physical possibility that you can take one more step.