If, like me, you’ve been both fascinated and unnerved by the recent articles describing neutrinos that may be travelling faster than the speed of light, you may also have developed a new, less skeptical view of things previously filed under “science fiction,” or at least are no longer automatically chuckling at them. This is one way to approach the marvellously subtle, yet thrilling, Another Earth.
On the night humans learn of another habitable planet that is approaching Earth, our protagonist Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) is celebrating her acceptance to M.I.T., and, while driving home, gawking out her window at the new planet. Another car, filled with a man, his pregnant wife, and their young son, are in her unseen path, and meet with a terrible fate when she runs into them head-on. Rhoda spends the next four years in prison for this, and when she is released, the new planet is much closer to Earth, and more dramatic events are imminent. With that new planet invariably hanging heavily in the sky (ominously? beautifully? expectantly?), Rhoda goes about searching for some meaning to her shattered life. She is drawn to John Burroughs (William Mapother), the surviving father of the car wreck, and the resultant encounters are both unexpected and realistic in their poignancy of two broken souls cleaving together.
Brit Marling not only plays Rhoda, but also co-wrote the original script, along with director Mike Cahill. She is magnetic in this film, always resisting the opportunity for histrionics, which many actors would have indulged in. She plays Rhoda very quietly, with an almost blank face, yet one on which we can read the deep currents of pain underneath. Despite that pain, she very much wants to re-connect with reality, not being content with the anodyne. Marling’s subtlety is all the more astonishing that as dramatic moments accrete, so too does the cumulative power, culminating in one of the best final shots I’ve ever seen.
The look of the film is also quite beautiful, loaded with subdued earth tones – lots of olive and brown, but deep black, too. And it was shot with an $8,000 camera – the Sony EX3.
Could this be the start of a new breed of actresses (along with Michelle Williams, for now) who believe in a more introspectively penetrating style of acting? Let’s hope so – it sure is exciting. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Rated PG-13