Another Life

Documentary, AT/D 2019, 72 min.

Alex, the sixty-year-old hermit lives somwhere near the imposing cliffs of the Irish coast. He shares his home with injured animals, for which he cares with dedication as long as it takes until they can return to the wild. The self-sacrificing care of his protégés is rooted in the firm belief that all life in the world is equally valuable. Even the smallest secret that he discovers on his window…

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Review

Alex lives as a hermit on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. He rarely socializes with human beings, sharing his life with animals instead – birds, geese, donkeys. Smaller creatures also find shelter at his place. Observing flies and spiders through a jeweler's loupe, Alex takes pains that the law to eat or be eaten is not a possibility in his own kingdom. "There is nothing more important than anything else." This universal equality of all living beings would amount to a radical non-violence among the creatures. As far as Alex is concerned, he has made this utopia a reality in his little world. At a certain point, Jan Prazak asks, who is Alex? "Who am I? God, I'd like to know that myself." Alex has decided to live in the present as simply as possible, an individual, dismissing notions of the future and past as ill-conceived. Perhaps this is also his way of existing on par with all the beings that surround him, for it is said animals do not perceive time.
However, people with a biography do face inescapable circumstances, as Alex at least indicates when he speaks of his childhood growing up in a mining settlement (a "slum"), or a son to whom he cannot relate because he perceives him as a stranger. Occasionally Alex cleans himself up when his girlfriend visits on weekends: "Women like fresh sheets." Even a hermit has to take a break once in a while. The closing image is reserved for donkeys gazing out at the sea. Their tranquility is what Alex is searching to find. (Bert Rebhandl)

Translation: Eve Heller

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