What is being established, in a very subtle manner, are two parallel timelines, two parallel universes, in one of which decorum is observed, and in the second of which it is not. We know we are in the realm of the latter when the waiter intentionally crashes the food.
What I think we are to understand is the tightly bound nature of these social systems, which run on a complex system of social habits, and which becomes undirected and helpless outside the bounds of these habits. When the complex dance misses a step, no one knows what to do, and everyone looks at everyone else, but there is no center in such a system without a leader, who in this example would by definition be someone who understands the system, but who exists beyond it.
What saves them in the end? Reconnecting at the appropriate junction with that system, with what should have happened the first time. They reconnect, in effect, with the first timeline.
And what traps the congregants in the church? The priest not following protocol.
I really think this movie is an extended commentary on the nature of conformity, of the simultaneously arbitrary and necessary nature of some social conventions among certain sorts of people, and of the quasi-hypnotic quality of many forms of learned helplessness.
This is the root of the anger many people when they witness non-conformity, someone doing something different. And I will repeat myself repeat myself by saying that the Left is the opposite of welcoming of genuine diversity of thought, even if the Right is often rightly called judgmental.
Here is the thing: Conservatives categorically reserve the right to call specific behaviors morally wrong. We all need that ability, and the Left, self evidently, feels no hesitation at all in judging individuals and groups in the harshest ways. But for me, at least, the more important question is that of freedom, and the two mindsets, two tendencies, differ radically here. The Left wants to be able to dictate, and the Right wants freedom even for people it hates. People who are not hurting anyone else are to be left unmolested by the society and particularly by the State, on a traditional Republican rendering of the issue, at least as I see it. The whole War on Drugs was driven by emotion and propaganda, not principle. We need to end it.
Good fences make good neighbors. That, to me, obvious bit of wisdom was widespread at one time.
For me personally, this film contains a lot of useful content. I am going to add it to my DVD collection