Another Earth

Another Earth

Each element of film “Another Earth” is driven by one breathtaking idea: a new planet, four times the size of the moon, appears in Earth’s sky. This shocking sight lends further significance to every aspect of the narrative, especially when it is revealed that the planet is indeed like its title suggests another Earth. Perhaps it isn’t a second Earth but rather this Earth, albeit in another universe that’s now visible.

That might account for why two planets so close together have such little physical impact on each other. In one sense, these two planets don’t share the same physical reality. In another sense, Earth 2 is right there in our sky: so close that a corporation sponsors an essay contest, and the winner gets to be the first person to visit it. I’ll admit it was harder for me to believe in the essay contest than it was to believe in second Earth.

But plausibility isn’t what this tantalizing film cares about. It has bigger fish to fry. It centers on Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), a promising young woman who during the opening scene finds out she’s been accepted into MIT’s astrophysics program; overindulges with alcohol to celebrate; and crashes her car while drunkenly listening to news reports about Earth 2, thereby killing a mother and child and putting a father into a coma.

A few years pass. She gets out of jail and hears that the father, John Burroughs (William Mapother), has come out of his coma. Rhoda destroyed by guilt over what she’d done wants to apologize or make things right or she doesn’t know; she shows up at his shabby rural house as a depressed recluse and makes up some story about doing his housecleaning.

So we’re dealing with one of those movie situations where two people slowly grow close but only one of them knows how deeply they’re connected. “Another Earth” works because it uses that scenario for a larger purpose; this is nothing less than a meditation on the infinite possible variations of a human life.

If she hadn’t had too many beers. If she’d been listening to a different radio station. If he hadn’t been driving down the road at that exact moment, in that exact place. The fatal accident was the result of an infinite number of “ifs,” stretching all the way back to if life had never begun on Earth at all. In our lives, we ride on chance’s wave.

What’s remarkable is how skillfully this movie assembles itself into a whole. The other Earth notion is left as an outlandish hook and not attempted to be justified scientifically except, of course, as the film’s central image. The relationship between Rhoda and John is portrayed as dangerous. The actors inhabit their characters so convincingly that they generate more concern than the plot strictly necessitates. And Earth 2, always hanging there above us, forces us to contemplate how random our fates are: Nothing in our lives was necessary; everything was inevitable

This movie has a nice story behind it, involving the actress and co-writer Brit Marling. She used to work in investment banking on Wall Street before she became the writer and co-director of “Boxers and Ballerinas,” a Cuban documentary made by Mike Cahill in 2004. They collaborated on this picture. It showed up at Sundance 2011 without any buzz whatsoever, then went on to win both the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and the Special Jury Prize.

“Another Earth” was filmed on a low budget; Cahill shot and edited it himself. I feel like it could have used more tripod work than hand-held; a more classical approach might have suited this contemplative material better. But it’s strong as is, and Marling is revealed as an exciting new talent here. If Tarkovsky’s “Solaris” (another film about some sort of alternate Earth) is profound, then this movie is provocative.

In this one, when a scientist places a call to Earth 2 and realizes she’s talking to herself what could that possibly mean?

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