Brit Marling in Another Earth
Another Earth had the most perfect trailer of the year, if not ever. It was almost a self-contained short film in itself; the protagonist, Rhoda, talking about herself in the third person and of forgiveness and second chances, over beautiful slow motion images, many of which contained the surreal sight of another Earth in the sky. This was an idea and a half and it looked to be well executed. Would that atmospheric and moving two minutes, maintain itself over ninety?
The plot is very much from the civilian’s point of view (e.g. Signs, Monsters, Attack the Block), with the small amount of official government type interference coming from TVs and radios. The main civilians of the film - Rhoda (Brit Marling, who also co-writes and produces) and John (William Mapother; Lost) - cross paths on the night of the duplicate planet’s discovery, in a tragic and harrowing way.
After seeing the trailer a few times, the first ten to fifteen minutes of the actual film are a little jarring. No fault of the film, but the feel of it is rather different; musically dissimilar, the editing is snappier and the use of handheld cameras was not obvious from the trailer. The latter makes the film rather voyeuristic and almost documentary-like, which works very well when coupled with the natural performances and character driven story.
The film has a relaxing feel to it, despite its dark subject, and does well to avoid spoon-feeding the audience. The shots in which Earth 2 is shown in the sky above small town America, where the film is set, are often narrated over by scientist Dr. Richard Berendzen, as he discusses the effects of a duplicate planet and, more specifically, a duplicate you, on society and the individual. These are great scenes, visually and philosophically.
The concept of another Earth so close to ours is purely metaphorical. As a concept, it is not very grounded in science; a planet of the same size, orbiting the sun so close to us would bugger up gravitational pulls and all sorts, but none of that matters. It is not important within this film idea, as it is there just to raise the questions, such as: What if you could meet yourself? What would you say if you could? What if you had made that decision inside of this one? It’s not a cop out that it never tries to explain the science of it - it was just not necessary.
Unfortunately, Another Earth falls down when a wrong turn in the script, towards the end, ruins what had previously been built in character development and atmosphere. The way in which Rhoda and John’s relationship develops is handled badly and isn’t essential to guiding the story to its eventual ending. It just did not seem natural or likely, and was a damn shame. As with the recentTake Shelter, it may have knocked a film, otherwise worthy of it, out of the top ten lists of 2011. It was the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, however, so obviously not everyone would agree.
Another Earth will be showing at Broadway until Thursday 22 December
Another Earth official website
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