I had never heard of Another Earth
in my life... err, afterlife before starting out to watch it. The
only reason it came to my attention is recently www.FoxConnect.com
was having a 50% off sale on all their blu-rays so I stocked up LIKE
A BOSS! Being that I'm constantly on the hunt for intriguing films
that have slipped under the radar of most people, my attention was
immediately drawn to this one as it looks like a unique take on the
concept of alternate worlds. It also stars Brit Marling, who I only
know from her guest appearance on an episode of my favourite TV show
Community, where she played a woman named Page that Britta
befriended only because she thought she was a lesbian. She had a
really good presence in that episode, so I'm curious to see what she
can do in a feature length movie.
Upon doing the briefest of online
research before writing this introduction, I discovered it had a plot
very similar to another film that came out a few months after it:
Lars Von Trier's Melancholia in that both films involved a
planet being discovered very close to our own Earth. I'd been
planning to review Melancholia sometime early next year, but
this discovery changed all my plans especially since I haven't done a
Dueling Movies feature in quite some time. A Ghoul Versus...,
a place where plans are as fickle as Sir Anthony Hopkins questionable
role choices!
Marling co-wrote this movie with the
director, Mike Cahill, whom I'm also not familiar with. This is his
debut film as it sounds like his specialty is indie science fiction,
so we should get along GREAT. Let's get ready to explore the concept
of alternate worlds with A Ghoul Versus Another Earth!
We open with Marling's character Rhoda
Williams narrating about her lifelong fascination with astronomy,
triggered by an image she saw of Jupiter as a kid. We see her drunk
driving home after a party, listening to the radio which announces
scientists have just discovered a planet “super close” to Earth
that can support life. She is so distracted looking up at the blue
planet in the sky that she plows right into a family stopped in their
car at a crosswalk.
Horrified, she weakly gets out of her
car to check on them. The husband is still alive, but his pregnant
wife and young son are dead. DAMN. We cut from this dark image to
four years later, where Rhoda is now in prison for her horrible
crime. Today is the day she's been released, which is cut with
footage of experts discussing the alternate planet which looks
extremely similar to Earth. She gets picked up by her family,
returning home where she gets reacquainted with her bedroom. She
searched the internet about Earth Two, finding about a contest a man
is holding offering a trip to the planet in the form of writing an
essay about why you're worthy to go.
The next day she heads to the career
center to find a job, taking a maintenance position at a local high
school. On her walk home she sees the man she hit pull over and
leave one his son's toys at the spot where the accident happened.
She goes home to research him, learning he's a Yale music professor
named John Burroughs. John is played by William Mapother, who played
the enigmatic Ethan Rom on Lost and Matt from the American
remake of the Grudge.
She goes to his house to see him, but
can't bring herself to knock on his door and talk to him. Instead,
she goes out into the woods and... strips down while looking up at
Earth Two. Huh, that's strange because Kirsten Dunst did almost the
EXACT SAME THING in Melancholia. I mean EXACTLY, at night
under the moonlight and all. While I seriously doubt Lars Von Trier
even heard of this movie while he was making his (Another
Earth came out a few months before Melancholia), it is
HIGHLY bizarre both movies feature such an identical looking scene.
Rhoda's decision to get naked is rather
stupid when compared to Dunst's, because in Rhoda's case it's the
middle of FREAKING WINTER. One bout of hypothermia and frostbite
later she decides to enter the essay contest, talking about how the
early explorers of the west were originally outcasts and ex-convicts
like herself. After a humiliating experience at a grocery store
where she gets recognized by a former classmate of hers, she marches
over to John's house to finally talk to him. We see John's life has
sunk into complete disarray after the accident, as he is strung out
drunk and there is garbage all over his house.
When he answers the door though she
loses all of her nerve, pretending to be a maid from a cleaning
service offering a free day trial of their services. The state
John's house is in, I think he'd need a MONTH long trial. He accepts
when he hears the magic word “free”, letting her into his house.
She cleans through the power of montage, John impressed enough to
hire her for next week. As she leaves she sees a woman pull up to
his home and enter. When she returns she tries again to tell him,
but he brushes her off because he's busy with something.
This goes
on for weeks, one night Rhoda returning home to find her family
watching TV. The government has finally made contact with Earth 2,
which makes me question why it took FOUR YEARS for them to attempt
this. I guess they wanted to wait until Rhoda got out of prison so
she'd be able to watch it first hand. That was nice of them to
prolong the biggest discovery IN ALL OF RECORDED HISTORY for her!
A Dr. Joan Tallis is handling the
broadcast duties, getting a response FROM HERSELF. Ooh, “alternate
versions of ourselves” story! I am SO fucking in! We cut to later
where Rhoda has transformed John's house into a place that doesn't
look like a refuge death camp, the professor setting up a telescope
he saw Rhoda playing with earlier in the living room. The look at
Earth Two, John seeming to have come out of his shell significantly
since the discovery of their alternate selves. They begin to bond,
which is just going to make Rhoda's reveal hurt SO MUCH more when she
finally guts up.
John drives her home, realizing he
never once thought to ask her name. She hesitates before replying,
but he has no reaction to it. This continues the biggest non-science
related plothole in the movie: how has John not recognized her the
entire time?! One day Rhoda tells John about her
desire to go to Earth Two, which greatly upsets him and tells her
it's a bad idea. Things get worse when he discovers she did laundry,
which involves washing his family's clothes and now he no longer has
the familiar scents in them. He kicks her out of the house in a
rage.
The next day as she heads home from working at the high
school, she sees John's truck parked outside her house. Frightened,
she goes up to talk to him. He says he tried to call her at her maid
job, but no one had every heard of her. She clumsily lies about poor
management, which he seems to buy. He apologises for his actions the
other day, taking her to an empty theater for an impromptu musical
performance on his musical saw.
He brings her home and they have sex
and FUCKING HELL you've made a mess of this, Rhoda. Afterward as
they lie in bed, John tells her about his family and how they got
killed by a drunk teenager. He says because she was a minor he never
found out her name, and I absolutely LOVE this movie for covering all
of its bases like that. I suppose people smarter than me would have
known a minor's details wouldn't be released in a crime, but this was
a very nice touch for idiots like myself. Taking the train home,
Rhoda goes into the bathroom and throws up, as she is thoroughly
disgusted at herself. She arrives home to some good news though, she
won the essay contest.
Rhoda heads to John's house looking as
resolute as she ever has, so you know it's about to get VERY painful
in a few minutes. I don't think I can do a good enough conveying how
PERFECT the movie has handled Rhoda and John's relationship, building
it very organically and sincere to the point you have this dreadfully
sick feeling stomach in your entire time knowing what's ultimately
going to happen. John takes the news about her winning very well,
putting on a happy face and cooking her a celebratory dinner. He's
isn't able to keep this up though, as halfway through their meal he
asks her not to go, to stay with him.
She begins to have flashbacks of that
fateful night, scored to some very dark music that is kicking the
heightening tension to the extreme. I never thought a scene with two
actors talking over food would have me on the edge of my seat, but
here we are. Rhoda finally confesses to everything, John screaming
at her to get out as his world silently implodes. That was one of
the hardest scenes I've had to watch in any movie ever that didn't
involve rape, torture, or watching Megan Fox try to act, which is
REALLY saying something.
Tearfully, Rhoda returns home to find
out her home is covered in reporters as her winning the contest was
just announced to the public. After watching an interview with an
astrophysicist who discusses how radically different life on Earth
Two could actually be, Rhoda races back to John's house. He yells at
her to stay away so she sneaks into one of his windows, which proves
to be a bad idea because he begins to strangle her. He stops though,
going into the kitchen. Rhoda tells him about the interview she just
saw and how his family could still be alive, setting her ticket for
the space shuttle on the table and leaving.
The movie jumps ahead to right before
the space launch, where Rhoda is watching John on TV discussing how
nervous and excited he is to be heading to Earth Two. The movie
skips ahead four more months, Rhoda coming home from work to find...
Rhoda standing outside her house. Rhoda Two starts to step towards
her as... things cut to black and the movie ends?! No! NOOOOOOO!
Just five more minutes, please!
Cue the credits.
Speaking as dignified as possible, this
movie kicked every kind of ass possible. Not only is this one of the
best movies I've reviewed on the blog to date, this is also one of
the best movies I've ever seen IN YEARS. I love how they took a very
stock storyline of a character trying to atone for their past and
made it completely riveting to the point you didn't even feel ripped
off that almost no sci-fi elements came into play despite what you
may have expected. Hell, it's almost a total opposite of the Signal in that aspect.
Virtually all of this is due to the
powerhouse performance Marling put in, which really was more
nonverbal than verbal as her character never spoke that much. She
did more in her expressions and mannerisms than I've seen most actors
do in the most verbose of roles. Even more impressive is that in
addition to being an amazing actor she's also an amazing writer,
having written or co-written most of the films she's starred in.
Aside from a few issues I had with some
REALLY bad looking zooms, Cahill showed himself to be a natural at
directing. There were many beautiful shots in the movie and he
definitely got 100% out of every actor in the film. He did all of
this on a miniscule budget of $20,000, filming it in his home town of
New Haven, Connecticut where he got a lot of help and contributions
from the locals to make a movie that in no way, shape, or form looked
amateurish.
What do you think happened in the end?
I think it's obvious Earth Two Rhoda never killed John's family, and
thus when she won the contest she had no reason to give him her
ticket. She also looked much healthier and dignified than Earth One
Rhoda, who spent most of the movie wearing dirty hoodies and looking
rather broken, which is very understandable. I would have loved to
see what they had to talk about, but I don't feel cheated by this
abrupt ending like I do in most films because it really was the best
way to end this. I do wonder about John though, because in theory
John Two will still be around to make for one hell of an awkward
situation.
I've seen a lot of reviews where people
are bitching about the science of this whole thing, how gravity would
destroy our planet blah blah blah. Even I'M not that nitpicky, and I
bitch about the stupidest stuff imaginable. Why even focus on that
when it's not what the movie's centering on? I mean, when I figured
out this wasn't a sci-fi movie despite being marketed as one, I
didn't care in the slightest because I was too busy enjoying the
highly engaging story.
Cahill and Marling reunited for another
indie sci-movie that was released earlier this year, I Origins.
This is another movie I'd never heard of until I was doing research
for this wrap up, but after this movie it has now moved to the top of
my list. Expect a review shortly, as it's set to hit blu-ray on
December 9th of this year. In the meantime, you should go
out of your way to track this movie down, it's among those rare gems
that we don't get a lot of anymore: a high quality labour of love
full of spectacular acting. Highest possible recommendation for
this one.
Click here for the Melancholia review!
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