Original subtitles

Not so long ago, thousands of people left their traces of their daily lives

on 8mm or Super 8 film.

Today, these velvety images lie forgotten in attics,

in flea markets or in the trash.

I easily harvested about a hundred of hours of these images.

Unexpectedly, the story of my friend Georges took shape in the midst of this chaos.

This film also pays homage to these so-called "amateur" images

for their simple love of the visible.

When I will be dictator

We are 17.

The first time I see Georges, I don't see him.

He is withdrawn, even shy.

In any case, he doesn't stand out in a crowd.

His apparent ingeniousness is his best disguise.

And yet, Georges is as handsome as...

When he enters a room,

something hangs in the air.

One day, we go into the deep woods at dawn

and plant Chinese cabbages and exotic flowers with unpronounceable names.

There is something rare in the light of early morning.

On the way back, Georges orders some milk at a café

and drinks it with a dignified air from a rubber breast on the glass.

We explore abandoned houses.

We set off on expeditions to neighbouring roofs

and the royal greenhouses at night; he had found a secret entrance.

He hitches rides in town with a sign saying:

"Nowhere".

Sometimes he looks like a tramp, sometimes an exquisite dandy.

At one moment, he wears a half moustache dyed green

to prove that the origin of the word "moustache" is "moss-tash".

Anger often overrides reason.

And we do wild things to not be bored.

We come from Woluwé, a neighbourhood in Brussels

where a dull sadness afflicts every doorway.

A part of town where nothing has happened for at least...

4 generations.

The adult world seems like an absolute drag.

To survive, we absolutely have to invent other lives

than the ones we are both destined for.

We're convinced that we'll be mired in mortal boredom

if we don't invent something light and improbable every day.

As children, we imagine other possible lives;

as adults, we will live them.

When I will be psychopathic

Here, my good Judaeo-Christian bourgeois upbringing

has made me a fairly civil and contained,

please and thank you and wait for the green light person.

But there...

at the other side of the universe...

There, I gun down all the boring and irksome people,

without warning, without turning a hair.

The conceited counter girl: kapow!

The podgy SUV driver: blam! blam!

Smarmy priests and their squeaky-clean scouts,

hysterical mothers, moralising kill-joys, know-alls: kapow!

The housewives of Woluwé-St-Pierre. (Georges, help me please)

Official artists: zing!

Bovine teens, school principals with side partings,

Parisians at home AND abroad,

sadistic prison guards,

lingerie salesgirls and hoover salesmen: ratatatat!

Top of the class: blam! bam!

Pen-pushers, snotty brats, small business presidents,

macho men, bimbos, insurance agents, chatty athletes interviewed on the radio,

Belgian tourists, industrial zone planners,

stereo manufacturers, noisy people,

shallow end life guards and freshwater fishermen,

tram ticket inspectors, Sunday DIY-ers,

moustachioed cops, dentists, top brass, official psychopaths,

pre-election politicians, sloganeers, sports interviewers,

designers, lawyers, professors of education,

other people's children: blam!

Georges and I blasted quite a few people.

Obviously, the world is becoming more and more empty.

But you can hear a cosmic silence...

And that's pretty good for now.

Sometimes, I just listen

to this infinite and mineral silence.

Not a word around.

We are 20.

And Georges has an enviable source of income:

he empties parking meters when he needs money.

He steals here and there, with no remorse.

He serves himself from the vast supermarket of the world.

Sometimes Georges sneaks a ride on the back of a tram.

He shows up in one car, then another.

Sometimes we sleep side by side, like children.

We think we're immortal. We are invincible warriors.

But we are afraid of each other.

His shower is a subverted Manneken-Pis,

he uses paper plates because he throws them out after every meal.

One day, there's a letter from Georges in the mailbox.

It's the first clue in a treasure hunt across the city

that ends with a note hidden in a tree trunk in the woods.

It reads:

One time in a forest, with Etienne, too, I propose we sign a pact.

I write: "We are blood brothers."

It's a joke but with have to sign it with REAL blood.

Suddenly, Georges, who isn't afraid of anything,

doesn't want to cut his finger.

He is like a terrified deer, backed into a corner.

That night, he ties our wrists together.

In the morning, the tie is undone.

This could all end badly.

By contrast, at the other side of the universe...

other possibilities for our lives are unrolling.

Rather than growing out into an infinite void,

the universe is peopled with possibilities.

When I will be an adventurer

In this life, I'm pretty timid.

Or to put it frankly: a stay-at-home.

I'm scared.

I'm scared of the unknown, the dark, of perverse bandits,

criminals and ghosts.

What's the point of facing mosquitoes and bad beds

to be bored on the other side of the world for a fighter's halo

or some other noble missionary cause?

But one day, I suddenly think:

"But the whole world starts at my doorstep?!"

"I just have to cross the threshold and bit by bit,

nearby then father afield,

the world spreads out from my doorstep..."

(Such a simple thought has never occurred to me before.)

Out there, miles and miles of lands I have never seen.

I say to myself I'll leave Brussels for a few days.

And off I go alone with just a few belongings.

Along the canal, there's a music coming from an ice-cream van by a bridge.

And a car seems to be circling the place where I've stopped.

I'm scared.

This tiny ice-cream music

and this shifty man with dark sunglasses leering at me...

The world suddenly seems breathtakingly wide.

Too vast.

My conquest of the world ends there, in�Ruisbroek, by a puddle.

Without Georges, I'm scared.

We are 25.

Our crazy escapades have ended because I'm moving abroad.

One day, I come back.

I look for him: he's disappeared.

I haven't seen him for months.

Finally, I find him in a psychiatric hospital.

He's drooling,

staring into empty space with trembling hands.

All his magnificence, mystery and beauty has been trampled by his medication.

He vaguely finds his wits to tell me angrily that I don't love him.

He hugs my neck,

very hard.

And he tries to strangle me.

When I will be an adventurer (take 2)

So I say:

"Georges, let's run away together. To the other side of the world."

In that universe, I'm not scared of anything,

and I wear a snakeskin outfit.

But Georges has a crisis.

He can't sleep or eat.

He sings his head off at all hours of the night.

When he isn't delirious, he stays silent for hours.

That isn't reassuring.

I'm suddenly scared again.

What are we doing there so far away from everything?

They tell us: "Go there and there, in the jungle.

There's a witch doctor."

They tell us: "But the road will be long."

Someone says: "The witch doctor is by the river."

But in that country,

there are many rivers to cross before you find the right one.

Finally, we find the witch doctor by accident.

He watches Georges for a whole day. Then he says:

"The village needs Georges.

He must speak for us with the Crocodile spirit on the river."

There Georges says that Croc-spirit

told him horrible things he can't repeat.

And that we have to leave now.

On the way back, we fight.

I'm tired.

He is awful.

I crack.

One day,

Georges phones.

He leaves a message that says:

"Happy New Year".

For various silly reasons, I didn't take the time to call him right back.

A few days later,

he is dead.

Suicide.

It is as if the sun has been suddenly extinguished.

There must be at least ONE universe

where Georges doesn't hang himself from a tree, alone, one winter's night.

When I will be immobile

When Georges died, time stopped.

Something got stuck.

Seasons pass several times.

Yet, it doesn't pass.

I wish I had...

I didn't mean...

I'm sorry that...

Too late.

We have had 30 years.

Georges will be 30 forever.

When I will be chief accountant

In the world where I'm the chief accountant,

all my pleasure lies in decimal points.

I spend hours nitpicking over details.

I ceaselessly add and subtract.

I split hairs.

I comb my lawn.

And I marry...

him.

We go on holiday by Lake Como or on the Costa del Sol.

We will have 3 kids. Here they are:

We take the boat here:

We visit this:

We are deeply bored but it's fine like that.

When I'm chief accountant

my job is to calculate the number of possible universes,

to evaluate the probabilities of all possible existences.

This calculation is obviously not just mathematical.

For instance, I have to consider

all the potentialities of the dead people to date and their various combinations.

Determine the potential number of crucial choices in an average life

and their possible consequences on other destinies.

I calculate, for example, that there are exactly

1,736 ways to cheat on your husband,

13,879 ways to catch a cold,

but only 27 ways to blow your nose.

And among the 2 billion

488 millions 320 thousand seconds in a life,

how many seconds does it take to "miss" your existence?

I find that there are apparently 1,217 conceptions of success,

but so many more conceptions of the failure of a life.

I calculate the probable number of universes where existence is miserable,

bearable,

average,

satisfactory,

happy,

or absolutely euphoric.

And depending on all the reasonable operators

and the surest probabilities,

I will calculate the number of universes where Georges is still alive.

In the universe where he is alive, Georges lives in the forest.

He lives with the squirrels.

And then, without warning, he returns naked to the city,

gives away his parent's money, sings loudly in the street, etc.

It happens without fail: he gets sent to the psychiatric hospital.

In the forest he's cured of the hospital;

in the hospital he's cured of the forest.

After a few years like that, Georges becomes suddenly very sweet.

But his eyes are so sad.

So I tell him:

"Georges, you talk to the trees and the rocks."

You tell them: "Chequered tablecloth, sand pile, (exquisite terrorist), bam!"

Moss-tash, moss-tash, bang!

"Sand pile, bang!" You tell them:

"Pact, shallow brasseries..."

"The hostesses with a side parting, exquisite terrorist, bam!"

You tell them:

"When I am a mirror in a world without humans."

Out there the trees and stones hear you.

In the universe where he's alive, Georges caresses my hand.

I can feel it all the way back to this world.

When I will be a perfect mother

In several world, I am pregnant.

In some worlds, the men involved don't want to be fathers.

In one of these realities,

the father of this potential says, when I tell him,

"Are you sure it's mine?"

In another reality, he's ecstatic.

And I'm not.

In one world, I have a child with Georges.

In another with Charles,

sometimes with Josse...

and sometimes with Luis.

With Christian I have five children, but that doesn't end well.

In some worlds, I have an abortion.

In those worlds, I wonder what happens to the unborn child.

Does he find another body right away in another universe

or does he have to start all over in a long cycle of complicated metempsychoses,

or does he just rejoin the absolute void he came from?

In those worlds,

I wonder what he is like in the worlds where he is born.

In one world, I'm Georges' mother.

In another, he's my brother.

One time, he's my father and once, my cousin.

There's also a world where I never meet him.

Thankfully, that terminally drab world is far away from here.

The other day, my daughter asked me when infinity began.

I didn't understand right away that she was talking about the infinity of time.

And then she asked me what was outside of the universe

and what colour it was.

I couldn't answer.

When I will be a space-time cosmonaut

There must be the "best" possible universe

among all the existing universes...

After a number of tries,

I finally find the world of happiness.

After a few hours there,

I get back in the spaceship. I'm freezing.

Maybe that world isn't made for me.

Anyway, I didn't see Georges there.

Fucking hell, what exactly do they have

against folks from Woluwé?

Dunno...

It's true. We chat to squirrels, too...

Shit!

They're really cute...

As if we were responsible for Georges' madness?!

Poor thing... Poor Georges...

But we are bored to death here.

Since when can boredom drive you mad?

I get really pissed off at the office!

But I never went crazy.

Maybe that's what you're missing?

Well, I fulfilled my father's dreams...

Is there only one world where Georges isn't crazy?

It's as if another you, somewhere else, was experiencing something different now...

Yeah, yeah, I get it.

I feel I'm living someone's else life since the beginning.

My mother wanted me to be a doctor but I decided to be a dictator.

I wanted to be a dictator, too but I had to marry Leon.

In the end I managed both, right, Leon?

Buck up, Leon! Fight back!

Who says that this world

isn't just a possibility of another world?

Because another world IS possible!

And you, Ursula, what do you think about Woluwé?

Woluwé is just a metaphor.

Metaphor, my ass!

Well now, the Revolution is ready. - Hey ho, let's go!

Finally! We can all be crazy!

You'll see, honey, it'll be fantastic!

It'll be a blast! - Can I throw the first grenade?

When I will be an extra

There is one world where the cinema doesn't exist anymore.

The major studios

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Warner etc

are tired of filming big-budget movies

recreating reality with scriptwriters, actors and costumes.

They decide it would be more interesting to hire extras in real life

and thus present a "real", everyday show.

In the beginning the people pay a lot to be a part of these huge scripts

that cover entire nations for months.

But soon, you can't tell

who's an extra and who's not.

And that spices things up a bit.

People really enjoy acting out their lives

in a non-stop spectacle.

These new actors put their heart and soul into it,

playing banal scenes with so much conviction

that only experts could appreciate the natural perfection.

It's simply impossible to tell an actor from someone who's just living.

Garbage men really seem to collect garbage.

Same for postmen, plumbers, ticket sellers who wink as they give you your tickets...

You even have to be careful with policemen.

Sometimes they play their roles so well that you get a ticket.

Quite a few couples tenderly play out the comedy of love.

Some even admirably act their own deaths.

And some imitate the sadness of mourning to perfection.

In short, it must be said it's a stunning production,

with no expense spared.

There,

Georges' madness passes for a weird act...

Experimental theatre.

At first, these extras followed the scriptwriters' story

but with time

they said they knew the dramatic twists of their own lives best.

They revolted and became impromptu "Authors" of their own existence.

Alas, unlike professional scriptwriters and their preference for a happy end

these amateurs create a lot of existential drama:

divorce, crime, fights, betrayal...

and stylistic conflicts.

Under the same roof, one person is in a psychodrama,

another in a comedy and a third in a B-movie thriller.

As for children, they generally prefer Westerns.

In short, the piece lacks style,

we can't follow the narrative thread, it's a mish-mash.

Too many scriptwriters off doing their own thing...

The country's economy crashes.

People spend all their time acting their own lives instead of working.

We can't see where the story of Humanity is headed, except towards ruin.

But it's so much more amusing than here.

When I will be God

Among the thousands of millions of billions of universes containing

all the possibilities of all our lives, there's one where I am God.

In that world,

I stopped time.

Well, you get a little bored after a while...

So, after an eternity,

I invented a time that can fast-forward and rewind.

As I'm God, I can do that.

It's better than stopped-stopped time.

Moss-tash.

There are different speeds to ffw/rew time.

In that universe, you can't escape unhappiness

but you can get through it really fast.

On the other hand, you can stretch out happy moments.

Some people end their life too quickly because it wasn't very happy;

hop! Fast forward everything.

And then, others, well,

they get stuck in a happy moment

and never come out.

Me, I want it to be the moment when we were driving in the snow...

When we were driving in the mist...

When we were driving in the dusk...

You started crying.

I asked why.

You said that you were happy.

When I will be happy

Today, I can tell my daughter what's on the other side of the universe.

What fills the nothing outside of the universe.

It's everything that has stopped existing here.

And everything that couldn't exist here.

Only backwards.

Outside of the universe, that's to say on the other side of time,

everything unwinds backwards.

There, every morning,

I walk backwards to bed, to spend all night unravelling obscure dreams.

I finally make up with people I'd been angry with

and I get to "un-know" them everyday.

In general, I "un-meet" just about everybody,

even friends.

I slowly unlearn all of my life.

Everywhere, people are reborn from the dead

and after a life falling out of love,

evaporating sadness and getting over joy,

they disappear completely in the embrace of two bodies.

There, Georges takes off

the slipknot that took his life.

Children stick butterfly wings back on.

People drive around sucking pollution back up their exhaust pipes.

Manufacturers work to clean up the earth,

left in a pitiful state by a distracted Humanity.

Bombers suck horrible bombs up off the ground.

The Nazis are heroes who extracted 6 millions deportees from gas chambers,

lots of them Jews.

Executioners wear hoods,

embarrassed at returning people to their complex existence.

And generation by generation,

all Humanity conspires to give birth to a perfect being.

When you will be a ghost

I often feel a light breeze on my neck.

Funny, there's not a draught.

I know it's you, Georges.

I can feel you behind me.

You're the one who loses my keys,

brushes my cheek,

makes the door creak behind me,

you read the mail over my shoulder,

you always make me lose the lottery,

you wake me up with thumps on the ceiling...

Stop! Stop!

Go bother the living-dead in Woluwé.

Go walk naked through their dreams.

Remember how much fun we had in those boring streets?

Georges came to me in a dream

and said:

"Let me leave now."

When I will have survived all this

One day, Georges phones.

This time I pick up.

Georges wishes me a happy new year.

Let's go off together.

I tell him: "Georges, far away from here,

forever."

"Out there, miles and miles of earth we've never seen."

"In that universe,

we are kings of the world."

I VOTE FOR YOU

English subs transcribed by: marooned2, 2015