The movie Sliding Doors is a must see whether you are looking for holiday entertainment or getting ready for winter hibernation. And while you are tucked in, kicking backing and sipping your hot chocolate you will be entertained as well as provoked to look at the turning points in your own life in a new way.
The plot centers around the main character Helen, an executive with a London based public relations firm. Both her love life and career hinge on whether she catches the subway on her way home after being fired. A romantic comedy-drama, it is clear that this is no ordinary tale about life’s ups and downs, its twist and turns. The story alternates between two parallel universes based on divergent paths Helen’s life could take. In the one scenario she catches her train and in the parallel scenario the train doors slide shut — a simple twist of plot that might be missed if not for the very different events that unfold. Near the end of the film, she sees brief visions of the alternative Helen’s life in a dream.
The movie did not receive widespread acclaim when it was released in 1998 but it is well worth viewing for its entertaining depiction of some very weighty topics – fate, destiny, parallel lives in parallel universes, the many realms of consciousness and the vast potentiality of experience that exists in the quantum world. Without even a mention of the undergirding science, viewers are immersed in the quantum field where all possibilities exist and where each potentiality can be brought into one’s ‘reality’.
Those who wrote and directed Sliding Doors have spent more than a few passing hours contemplating these big ideas, choosing to show us how actions taken in a single moment in time can propel us down different paths creating totally different experiences.
All this might seem too frivolous to be important but there are some important ideas embedded in this story. For a few hours at least, Sliding Doors suspends our highly analytical and rational minds that have been conditioned to function effectively in the three dimensional world we currently occupy. Once suspended we are free to imagine how different life might be “if”, and more importantly we might even be provoked to wonder how different our own life might be “if” . . . And this is the film’s real value, its gift to its viewer.
When I look back on my own life I see several discrete sections that one could not have imagined would have linked together in the way my life ultimately unfolded. Segues between these are most interesting and on reflection were filled with intense emotions. In retrospect, I see the ‘sliding doors’ that separated each. I am struck by the ingenuity of the soul plan that so cleverly knit them together in the patchwork quilt I know as my life. Sure a distinct pattern is apparent, but who might have imagined the variation sewn into this still unfolding design.
The movie, my life and I imagine yours are reminders that life is full of twists and turns, ups and downs. We exist within a vast potentiality that affords countless opportunity and variety of experience. It offers each of us myriad chances to chart and re-chart our future, to allow destiny to unfold and thus to fulfill our soul’s plan for this lifetime.
In Sliding Doors, we are reminded how different life can be depending on which path we choose to take, while we are challenged to question which of the outcomes have been etched into our destiny by our ‘higher self’. It’s quite something to consider, ponder and wonder. . . and great food for thought as one enters a new year!
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