- Another Earth
- OPENING: 07/20/2010
- STUDIO: Fox Searchlight
- RUN TIME:100 min
- ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site
The Charge
Can the presence of another Earth be the thing that brings hope to two lost souls?
Opening Statement
Independent films rarely take on science-fiction. Reason is because sci-fi films usually require lots of money for sets and effects. On the other hand, having angsty conversations about your family is relatively cheap. When the genre is tackled, I have often enjoyed the results mostly because they tend to be deconstructions or re-imaginings of the sci-fi tropes and the films I’ve seen before. That is exactly what Another Earth is. The duo who wrote the film are the director and the main star, Mike Cahill and Brit Marling. In this film, they show us an amalgamation of two significantly individual films that, at times, are smashed together to good effect.
Facts of the Case
Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) is a bright young woman accepted into MIT’s astrophysics program. She aspires to explore the cosmos. A brilliant composer, John Burroughs (William Mapother – Ethan from Lost), has just reached the pinnacle of his profession and is about to have a second child. On the eve of the amazing discovery of another world with the same bodies of water, continents, people, history, and in all ways a perfect duplicate of our own planet, tragedy strikes and the lives of these strangers become irrevocably intertwined.
The Evidence
When the identical planet, called Earth 2, first appears in the night sky it is a small blue speck. Four years later, Earth 2 appears on the horizon as a bigger sphere than the moon, which would not only mean that in the next few months the two planets would collide but also that there would be so much havoc being wreaked upon our earth–tidal waves, shifting poles–that we would be cursing Earth 2 rather then trying to contact it. So you can kind of see that physics is definitely played with fast and loose. This movie is as sci-fi as Back to the Future; in other words, it’s just a plot point. All fiction and no science. That said, it is a new way to do the overly trodden alternate dimension/alternate timeline story and for that I give it a few brownie points.
The second part of the story is something akin to Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King or Alejandro Inarritu’s 21 Grams where guilt leads a character to reach out to someone they feel they owe something to. Both of those comparisons are weak though, and the way the shame and sorrow storyline is woven into the Earth 2 storyline–“I wonder if my life is as jacked up on Earth 2 as it is here.”–took it all in a new direction and explored new ideas which I enjoyed. The two main actors, Brit and William, were fearless and flawless in bringing the depression their characters were feeling to the forefront and not holding anything back. The only thing they never sold me on was the romance that was supposed to have been blossoming between them. It never felt like they should be lovers; it felt like they should have remained good friends in their strange, psychotic and entirely messed up relationship.
Director Cahill is someone I expect to see great things from. He intros this film in a way that reminded me of the way Aronofsky introed his own debut, Pi–loud and abrasive and draws you right into the story, no questions asked. Cahill is minimalistic in his dialogue, often letting the visuals speak for themselves for long stretches of the film. Sometimes this makes his characters feel like observers in a world that is no longer their own, sometimes it makes them distant to the audience. It’s good that he has such confidence in his composition and cinematographer, whose itchy zoom-lens trigger finger needs to be controlled, but it will be interesting to see if he continues the understated style he’s pursuing here. I also want to praise Fall on Your Sword, the band responsible for this film’s score. It was brilliant and perfectly sweet and nasty and gritty.
Closing Statement
All this said, I spent most of the film thinking, “Where in the blue blazes have I seen this story before?” not only because it felt like a retread as I’ve stated but also because it felt familiar, like an old friend you haven’t seen for years. They look familiar, but they’ve changed and you can’t quite place where you know them from. When the light bulb finally comes on, all the memories flood back and you can sit down with them and see the path they’ve taken that has brought them to you again.
The Verdict
8/10
3 comments ↓
Except for Rhoda’s family being almost completely marginalized from her life or the story (which is fine because it allows the fat-free 90 min. narrative to focus on Rhonda’s relationship with John and, to a smaller-but-no-less-stirring extent, the older janitor) this is every bit as good as advertised. Brit is cute and intelligent (that she co-wrote and co-produced the movie speaks volumes about her skills; this girl is going places) and this such a simple-yet-efficient blue-print for low-budget filmmakers to do science fiction on a shoe string. Mike Cahill also shot and edited “Another Earth” and, though small-budgeted, the sci-fi aspect doesn’t come as cheap despite clearly being the background to the very human drama happening in ‘our’ Earth. The many scientist we hear theorizing throughout on radio/TV broadcasts (which didn’t hit me until later were preparing viewers for the ending, which at first shocked/disappointed me but the more I thought it over the more I realized it couldn’t have ended better) reminded me of Brice Parain’s memorable cameo in Godard’s “Vivre sa Vie.” It doesn’t hurt that Bill Mapother brings his ‘A’ game and makes post-accident John Burroughs every bit as complex as one would expect (pitiful but not broken, depressed but not out of touch, etc.) for a movie that has a science fiction twist that still mostly contends with typical indie-pic angst territory. Love the comment from John that the people of ‘Earth 2′ probably don’t refer to our Earth as #2.
From the daring-but-could-have-gone-really-tasteless final act to an ending that hasn’t made me wish more for a sequel to materialize (there’s a better chance of a Zemeckis-helmed Hollywood remake with Angelina Jolie fighting her mirror assassin and Chris Walken as the billionaire-turned-space-benefactor than a direct sequel, but a guy can dream!) “Another Earth” gave me the best and most enthralling 90 minutes I’ve spent watching a movie screen in theaters this year.
I liked the film as a love story–the two main characters come out of a deep depression as they start to know the insides of each other. And the ending continues that theme as she gives up her escape to give him a chance at regaining his old happiness. In our group discussion an opposite view from mine was that the couple actually did have sex. To me this was not shown and would have been a serious breach of conduct on Rhoda’s part had it occurred: laying with him under false pretenses. It would have undermined what I saw as a true caring for his well-being on her part.
But since half my group thought they had made love, it gives cause to the argument that the film was seriously flawed–one shouldn’t have to guess at something like that.
i was so surprised when i realised that this was a serious story. Not a collegemovie with a space view.
Usually i show the mindbending films for my wife. Well, heres another good film to see again. I look forward to it.
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