Strange

I have a new appreciation for strange. Not because of the movie that I'm about to talk about, but just because of college so far in general. You're all strange. I mean, some of you are stranger than others, but you are all really, really strange. And so am I. Strange is beautiful, not physically so to speak but it's just really beautiful to know we're all super strange and in that strangeness we can come together.

On Sunday at Signs and Wonders we watched Lars and the Real Girl. Lars is a socially awkward 27 year old man who lives in the garage of his brother, Gus, and sister-in-law, Karin's property. Oddly enough, Lars is loved by everyone in his life. Karin wants him to come to dinner or breakfast, or lunch, anything with her and Gus. At work, Lars' coworkers love him, and talk to him genuinely even if he doesn't respond. It was awkward to watch these people, especially those at Lars' church care about him when he didn't respond in a socially expected way. I was shifting around in my seat and making fists anyway.

Moving on. While Lars really made me rediscover what social awkwardness is, he had a kind and loving heart. He'd do favors for people, and he was incredibly polite when he would talk. It gave me hope for Lars.

And then he ordered a sex doll. As soon as Bianca came, Lars became a new person. Suddenly he was coming to dinner with Gus and Karin--never without Bianca. He would talk to Bianca, his coworkers, to Gus and Karin, this love suddenly made Lars lovable. Hm, reminds me of a class, "something can't be lovable until it is loved" or something along those lines.

Lars was having a delusion. He would love and see Bianca as real until he didn't need his delusion anymore. This was Lars' brain's way of helping him cope with something drastic in his life that he couldn't face anymore. Meanwhile, the small town Lars lives in went to work playing this delusion with him. Bianca was helping out at the local school, getting involved in the church's ladies nights out, volunteering, and so forth.

"I have a school board meeting. Bianca got elected, so... " -Lars 

Soon though, Bianca begins to die. Lars is the one who allows her to develop this illness that ultimately causes her death--this marks the ending of his delusion. Okay, while I'm pretty sure real delusions don't work this way and I think a community in this day in age would be pretty hard pressed to play along with Lars' delusion, the movie was great.

I'm going to leave out the love interest and the Lars' portrayal of how to play a good boyfriend even to a sex doll and the controversy on other mens' opinions of how to treat women for the one thing that struck me in the movie: what I think created Lars' delusion.

Lars' mother died while giving birth to him. He never had a mom, and his dad was always heartbroken. So if you think about it, Lars' childhood was depressing and he never really learned what it felt like to be loved. Of course Lars is loved, but that's at 27, and while it's a kind of love that most of us search after, Lars was looking for the kind of nurturing love that comes from a mom.

Ever heard the saying, "Mom is a little boy's first love?" You don't have to believe it, I really don't, but I think in this movie, Lars is trying to find a love that he never had. He wants that special kind of companionship where you can love and nurture someone, and they'll love and nurture you back. Karin, Lars' sister-in-law, is pregnant throughout the movie, and as she becomes more and more pregnant, Lars seems to discover what it's like to want to one day have a life with someone and love them enough to want to have children that he can nurture and love and call his own. But Bianca can't have children, and Lars states that not long before Bianca's disease starts to make her die.

Overall, I think it took Lars delusion with Bianca to see what love really is, and to discover that love that was absent to him for 27 years. In the end he gets a real girlfriend by the way, and all along throughout the movie viewers see him kind of giving her wondering looks like, "Huh, wonder what it would be like to have her around" which I found a little humorous. Lars' numbness to love thawed at the end of the movie, and it seemed like he discovered that he didn't have to hide from it.

So as strange as Lars was, he got it in the end. And his strangeness was really what brought a community of people together, and their strangeness helped him to get it together.

"We are here to celebrate Bianca's extraordinary life. From her wheelchair, Bianca reached out and touched us all, in ways we could never have imagined. She was a teacher. She was a lesson in courage. And Bianca loved us all. Especially Lars. Especially him." -Reverend Brock

And Lars thought that people coming over to sit and knit and give him food while Bianca was upstairs deathly sick was strange.