What would we do if we came across ourselves all of a sudden? Yes, we sometimes say things to ourselves but what if we see ourselves facing us? What would we say, would we want to say something, would we be scared and run away? Not like looking at the mirror to our reflection, the same of us that we can touch, as alive as we are. We, living in a parallel world, a parallel we. Are we really one and only?
Mike Cahill’s “Another Earth”, which was directed in 2011 and was awarded at Sundance Film Festival, fills our mind with these questions. The night that a world parallel to our world exists, Rhoda, who is a successful student and learns that she is going to study at IMT, has fun madly to celebrate. She believes that anything can happen, her eyes are dazzled with her bright future. She drives back home drunk, it is announced on the radio that the parallel world can be seen on the sky and the DJ. tells people to look up. As she tries to see the planet, she hits the car waiting at the red light. When she gets out of the car in great difficulty, wounded, she sees a woman with open eyes, a little boy at the back seat and a man with his head down. All of them are dead. Life is changed all of a sudden, she goes to prison, when she gets out of prison, things she can do are limited as a convicted person. The world that has exhibited all opportunities generously, has escaped from her by laughing horribly. The ground she has believed to be lying under her feet everlastingly as solid as possible, has cracked all of a sudden. Is the person who walks on cracked ground the same with the one walking on solid ground? She starts working as a janitor at a high school, she works together with an old, male janitor, as silent as she is, they communicate without words. Two people with cracked hearts, they drift with cracks in life that goes on and on without touching it. Life is there, you hear and remember even if you do not want to. People go on living, they love, laugh, suffer, start university. Rhoda is behind a curtain that reflects light very dimly.
What would we do if we came across ourselves all of a sudden? Yes, we sometimes say things to ourselves but what if we see ourselves facing us? What would we say, would we want to say something, would we be scared and run away? Not like looking at the mirror to our reflection, the same of us that we can touch, as alive as we are. We, living in a parallel world, a parallel we. Are we really one and only?
Scientists keep on talking about the new world, there are lots of theories. It turns out that there is another one of us in the new world and they live our lives there. A journey is planned for this world. The volunteers are asked to write an article on why they want to go there to be able to take the journey. Rhoda writes as well, writes about the first discoveries. She indicates that people without solid places went on these journeys, just like her. Perhaps a new world, perhaps a new beginning and end.
As she goes through the news of the accident she had, she learns that the man who drove is alive. He is a successful composer, a lecturer. She goes and finds him, wants to apologise but she cannot. She says that she comes from the cleaning company and tries to help him that way. He is on a cracked ground as well, life drifts between gloom clouds for both of them. Rhoda organises his house and mind, hers as well. Can there be a new beginning, do the cracks sprout like grass, flowers shoot out of stones? Rhoda learns a new theory later. The scientist that explains this theory on TV says even at a difference of a moment’s notice, lots of things can change at the night that the new planet was seen, there can be new opportunities. The old man she worked with has made himself blind and deaf. He has tried to chink up that way, he does not want to see or hear neither himself nor the world. He has left behind all opportunities, he can endure his own darkness only. Rhoda visits him, the old man recognises her, two at a curl of sadness.
The director takes us to a journey on the roads of life with the cracks of life in his first full-length film. We see the new world on the horizon all through the film, the parallel world. It is as if this blue planet observes people. Rhoda looks and thinks with us. Are we only one? How much do we know ourselves as our lives have the capacity for infinite opportunities? Do we know ourselves? Do we want to know? How far are the people living on the streets or people who want to drown their sadness with different things to us? Things that bore us, things we cannot change or think so cross our minds. Music accompanies our thoughts, life is in its ordinary rhythm, it is as if we hear Rhoda’s inner voice. Existence, taking that rock on top of the hill, knowing that it will roll back again, just like Sisyphos, a struggle, even if it does not lead anywhere, finding yourself, becoming conscious of yourself. “I is another” says Rimbaud, as Yunus Emre says: “There is an I within me.” Do people want to discover their depths as they run on and on fast, easily under the dim lights, without thinking, knowing? We remember that when Yuri Gagarin was all alone in space, he decided to fall in love with the sound he heard not to get mad with it, he changed it into a wonderful music in his mind. All of us can be cracks on the “Castle of Glass” only, as Linkin’ Park sings, new beauties can be discovered at the point of utter hopelessness but only by knowing our wounds, leaving behind fears at the waves of light, as life goes on.