Dir. Mike Cahill, USA, 2011, 92 mins
Cast: Brit Marling, William Mapother, Kumar Pallan
Review by Eva Moravetz
At first glance, Mike Cahill’s Sundance prize winning first-time fiction feature, Another Earth, suggests some earth-bound sci-fi drama-adventure. But those who expect an indie version of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind or Independence Day will be disappointed. Instead, Another Earth is an intense, beautiful and haunting story of two people tragically crossing each other’s paths; a story that is approached from a spiritual angle, which is more philosophy than science fiction.
After a night of drunken partying, Rhoda (Brit Marling), a promising student accepted to MIT, violently crashes her car into another vehicle. She had been distracted by a carbon copy of Earth appearing in the night sky. She and her passengers all survive but the driver of the other vehicle, John Burroughs (Mapother), a music professor, is not so lucky. His wife and young son die instantly while he is taken to hospital in a coma. Rhoda is sentenced to four years in jail.
When Rhoda is released, she is dishevelled, depressed and withdrawn. She takes a job as a janitor in her former high-school and confines herself to a lone existence. ‘I don’t want to be around too many people or too much talking,’ she explains. Her solitary life reflects her state of mind. Clearly tortured by guilt, Rhoda sums up her courage to knock on John’s door in order to apologise (John does not know her identity as she was still a minor at the time of the accident). However, she loses her nerve and claims to have come to offer cleaning services for a maid service company. She begins to regularly do housework for the widowed John. This develops into a relationship with him that is at first matter-of-fact professional and then becomes more intimate and romantic. In the meantime, everybody is excited about the twin Earth looming in the sky and Rhoda enters an essay competition to win ticket for the first space flight to the mysterious planet.
Early critical reception of the film has been quite positive but some reviewers have accused Cahill of using the science fiction element as a ploy to keep the audience interested. This completely misses the point that ‘the other Earth’ of the title is nothing more than a symbol that frames the story and its message alluringly. It is a metaphor for another reality, a parallel universe in which the same people might have other chances, where events might take different turns. We often see Rhoda wandering and looking up at the mirror Earth in the sky longingly as if wishing she could grow wings and fly away from the tragic reality of her ruined life. Her inner spirit seems to be as passionate as her exterior is subdued.
Both Brit Marling and William Mapother deliver intensely smouldering performances with Marling carrying the heavier load of the guilt-ridden, tortured outcast. Despite the film’s low-budget visuals, achieved with a handheld camera, there are some stunning exterior views with the duplicate Earth shining at night or appearing faintly obscured by daylight, both over land and above the ocean.
The fact that John does not know he is befriending the killer of his family keeps the tension high for the audience till the end and we are uneasily aware of some dramatic development to come. This tension would still be apparent if there were no science-fiction component in the story. Although the solution at the very end of the film might not excite everyone into jumping out of their seats, Another Earth is a very engaging, soul-searching movie. It is not for mainstream film buffs nor for art-house geeks but for anyone who has ever pondered a bad decision or unfortunate event and exclaimed ‘If only!…’
xx - posted on 23/05/2012 13:13:28
