Film Review: Another Earth.
In high school I remember watching Kryzstof Kieslowski’s masterpiece The Double Life of Veronique. Aside from being completely floored by the natural beauty of actress Irene Jacob, I was faced with a stunning philosophical epiphany, of the possibility of having a doppelganger of myself on this planet. At the time it seemed unfathomable, but the way that Kieslowski filmed his story, of seeing random strangers through warped glass and coming to the realization that we may in actuality be seeing ourselves, made it entirely probable.
Irene Jacob in Kieslowski’s ‘The Double Life of Veronique’.
I later learned that this is incredibly probable. According to cosmologist Max Tegmark’s theories on meta-universes, we can postulate that the universe is composed of an infinite number of particles, and therefore if those infinite particles are combined an infinite number of times, the chances of duplicating a combination is highly likely. Think of a bottomless jar of M&Ms, and imagine grabbing a handful of M&Ms an infinite amount of times. It’s not impossible that in those trillions and googleplex amount of attempts, that we will come up with a handful of M&Ms that have the same number and same colors as our very first handful.
It’s a highly intriguing concept, one that Kiselowski addressed with a beautiful visual poetry and philosopher’s compassion. The Double Life of Veronique is one of those film, like the canon of Tarkovsky and Kubrick, that opens our minds by way of the heart. These films always let us know that despite our bravado and confidence as a race, we will always be a microscopic part of something greater.
Where Kieslowski’s universe was contained within the human heart, Tarkovsky and Kubrick used a far more literal metaphor for the multiverse, and that is outer space itself. When we look at our forays into space, one often wonders what our endgame is - are we seeking other planets to colonize? A place to dump our garbage? Perhaps we are looking for the end of space, the borderline, where beyond the quasars lies a literal heaven, the domain of the creator(s)? Or perhaps hell? Kubrick and Tarkovsky show us encountering creation itself, a vast pool of light and alchemy that is only given shape by our planet’s most holy of traits, which is love.
These were magical films that had an unprecedented philosophical depth, and not since this year’s Tree of Life had I experienced a film like them. Imagine then my joy to stumble upon Mike Cahill’s micro-budgeted film Another Earth, a heartfelt take upon the multiverse done with a deft sensitivity that hearkens the work of the aforementioned masters.
Infact my experience with Another Earth was so eerily similar to what I felt with The Double Life of Veronique that I couldn’t help but think of things like deja vu and duplicate realities. In Another Earth I experienced a journey into the universe of the human heart, and I was likewise completely captivated by an onscreen ethereal beauty a la Irene Jacob, this time in actress Brit Marling.
Like many a great film that deals with the travails of compassion, Another Earth begins with an end, a collision of fates that ends up shattering the bonds of a family. The perpetrator, a young teenage girl returning from a graduation party, is distracted while driving home, looking up in the night sky at a new astral entity, a large blue dot right next to the moon. Entranced, the young girl doesn’t pay attention to what lies ahead of her, and she plows into another car, killing all but one of the passengers.
Years pass, and what was once a blue dot has now materialized into an inexplicable scientific phenomenon - we are told that this is an exact duplicate of the planet Earth, and it now hovers in our orbit.
From the outset, as viewers we know this is something very strange. One would assume if two planets came to within such close proximity of one another, that the gravitational pull would be catastrophic, and the tides of the oceans would be restless. But all is normal on planet Earth, and while the mystery of another Earth is on everyone’s mind, it has, like so many sensationalistic news stories, faded away in its impact, and it has now become an acceptable part of everyday life.
And it is here where Another Earth shines, in that like Kieselowski, director Cahill forgoes space travel and instead delves into the infinite expanse of the human heart. We follow the equally improbable relationship of the young girl, now older and an emotional recluse, with the widowed man whose family she killed. Hovering above this is the prospect of what exists on the second Earth, and the confluence of both story lines gives us one of the most probing insights into our existence. We waver between reality and illusion, concept and theory, right and wrong and the infinite space between.
Holding all of this together is the presence and performance of actress Brit Marling. Marling, who was also a co-writer on the film, was once destined for the world of corporate banking before taking the leap into filmmaking, and I’m thankful she did. Marling is a star in the making, an actor with the enviable balance of intelligence, compassion and natural beauty. She has an undeniable presence, something which cannot be taught. I’m already dreaming up of a script to send her. I’m hooked, she’s the real deal.
I absolutely love movies like this. This is true independent cinema, where concept, story and performance overcome budget and celebrity, where a movie wills itself into existence and has something to say, and says it with both confidence and nuance. While the film is saddled by lo-fi trappings of jittery handheld camerawork (done, apparently, on purpose), it is on a whole a highly accomplished piece of filmmaking, and an example on how to turn limitations into something truly epic in scale. Like Shane Carruth’s Primer, the film opens up the space of the imagination, of letting us build worlds in our heads and hearts. The film feels absolutely huge, bolstered by a brilliant score by the folks at Fall On Your Sword.
I left Another Earth in love again with cinema, of what we are capable of doing with limited means, of the desire to simply tell stories in our chosen visual medium. I left the theater more confident in cinema than ever, and hoping that with Lilith I’m contributing to a tradition that simply refuses to die. I was also reaffirmed that in the face of Bayhem and The Smurfs, we are indeed in the most exciting time in cinematic history, that technology has given us that rare opportunity to uphold the traditions of outsider art. It’s an amazing time to be making movies.
Another Earth is in limited release in select cities. Please call your local theater and petition to have it screened in your area. It is not to be missed.
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merkwurdigeliebe said:
I saw this film at sundance. Felt very much the same way upon leaving the theatre. Not a perfect film by any means, but certainly one that restores some hope to independent film making. At least for me. Now I must see this Kieslowski film.
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stevenhoang said:
I’m watching Double Life today!
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