Anoth­er Earth

Mike Cahill’s Anoth­er Earth offers a frac­tured reflec­tion of what might have been. Not in its sto­ry of duel fates and uncer­tain futures, but in hark­ing back to a sci­ence-fic­tion cin­e­ma that took its cues from the expan­sive ideas of Carl Sagan and Arthur C Clarke rather than the expen­sive thrills of George Lucas. On this oth­er Earth, the genre remained a cru­cible of ideas, with Stan­ley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky its heroes.

Anoth­er Earth may not stand com­par­i­son with the work of these mas­ters, but this con­fi­dent debut lends its weight to the renais­sance of (post-)modern sci-fi. Show­cas­ing a keen intel­li­gence and under­stat­ed style, its most obvi­ous con­tem­po­rary point of ref­er­ence is Dun­can Jones’ Moon. And yet, like Jones’ debut, Anoth­er Earth is very obvi­ous­ly a first film – with both the ener­gy and the inex­pe­ri­ence that sug­gests. It’s an ambi­tious but flawed dra­ma that bold­ly announces Cahill’s arrival – not his greatness.

Late night. A house par­ty. Rho­da Williams (Brit Mar­ling, who co-wrote the script with Cahill) is cel­e­brat­ing her accep­tance into MIT. As she dri­ves home, the radio announces a mirac­u­lous dis­cov­ery – a new plan­et in the sky bear­ing all the hall­marks of an Earth-like abil­i­ty to sus­tain life. But in the same breath of dis­cov­ery comes tragedy, an acci­dent that will alter the course of both Rhoda’s life and her victims.

Pick­ing up the pieces sev­er­al years lat­er, two nar­ra­tives will play out. As Rho­da is drawn irre­sistibly to wid­ow­er John (William Mapother), dri­ven per­haps by com­pas­sion, but more like­ly by guilt, con­tact is made with the new plan­et, dubbed ​‘Earth 2’, and an incred­i­ble, impos­si­ble rev­e­la­tion occurs.

These two threads – one, a micro­scop­ic study of indi­vid­ual lives in sta­sis; the oth­er, a civil­i­sa­tion-scale sto­ry of infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties – will inter­weave to cre­ate an icy tableau of alien­ation and bro­ken dreams.

Shot in a palette of frigid blues, whites and greys, Anoth­er Earth fore­grounds the emo­tion­al iso­la­tion of John and Rho­da. John’s grief has metas­ta­sized, becom­ing an almost phys­i­cal thing that infects every­thing around him with decay. His house is lay­ered with grime and clut­tered with mem­o­ries, but in a sym­bol­ic act Rho­da will come to clean it once a week – pre­tend­ing to be some­body she’s not, and yet, at the same time, dis­cov­er­ing the per­son she real­ly is.

Cahill allows their rela­tion­ship to devel­op at a lan­guid pace, lin­ger­ing on dust motes caught in shafts of pale sun­light, and fram­ing his actors in close-up. Anoth­er Earth isn’t a beau­ti­ful film, exact­ly (it has a grainy DV vibe that screams, ​‘Take me seri­ous­ly!’), but it pos­sess­es a sen­su­ous visu­al tex­ture. It is thought­ful­ly – even self-con­scious­ly – com­posed, but its very still­ness threat­ens to leave the dra­ma ossi­fy­ing in front of you.

The dra­mat­ic dynam­ic between Rho­da and John isn’t com­pelling enough to with­stand such extend­ed scruti­ny. John spends the major­i­ty of the film in the dark about Rhoda’s iden­ti­ty – and is thus lit­tle more than a cipher for her heal­ing process. How much rich­er would their rela­tion­ship have been if Rho­da had told him the truth, mak­ing John emo­tion­al­ly com­plic­it in their affair and forc­ing him to deal with his own feel­ings of trau­ma and guilt?

John’s igno­rance strips him of com­plex­i­ty, and so key scenes between them fail to spark. When John, a com­pos­er, takes Rho­da to an emp­ty con­cert hall and plays for her, it’s sup­posed to sug­gest inti­ma­cy and rev­e­la­tion. Instead, it feels like you’re intrud­ing on someone’s slight­ly embar­rass­ing ​‘moment’.

Trapped as she is in this cal­ci­fy­ing real­i­ty, you can sym­pa­thise with Rho­da as she gazes wist­ful­ly at the new plan­et and dreams of escape. As it hap­pens, an entre­pre­neur is offer­ing the chance to win a seat on a pri­vate space flight, a com­pe­ti­tion that Rho­da enters and wins, much to John’s dis­may. His life – along with his house – is begin­ning to feel the ben­e­fit of a woman’s touch.

But Earth 2 is where Rhoda’s (and Cahill’s) heart real­ly lies. Part-metaphor, part-mys­tery, part-MacGuf­fin, it’s an inspired idea that affords Cahill the oppor­tu­ni­ty to muse on the big ques­tions that so clear­ly fas­ci­nate him. Earth 2 is a coun­ter­part to the fan­ta­sy of escape that Rho­da is already enact­ing with John. But like any fan­ta­sy, all it does is rein­force just how trapped we are in the present. It’s a con­stant reminder of a life just out of reach – at once tempt­ing, promis­ing and mocking.

In voice over, Dr Richard Berendzen (a for­mer teach­ing assis­tant of Carl Sagan) wax­es lyri­cal, won­der­ing about the mys­tery of our­selves. Do we – can we – know our­selves? Would we recog­nise our­selves if we were ever to meet? Then Rho­da tells a sto­ry about the first Russ­ian in space, tor­ment­ed by a tick­ing sound whose ori­gin he couldn’t dis­cern. Fac­ing the risk of being dri­ven mad, he closed his eyes and the tick­ing became a sym­pho­ny. Is real escape only to be found in the imag­i­na­tion? Is that where res­cue and redemp­tion are? Where peace is? If so, what is Earth 2?

Cahill rais­es these ques­tions but isn’t inter­est­ed in the answers. Of course, there aren’t any answers. Or per­haps there are too many. His film con­cludes with a crescen­do of uncer­tain­ty, in a smart twist that throws open new ways of look­ing at what has gone before. It also, it should be said, sug­gests nar­ra­tive incon­sis­ten­cies that aren’t addressed but should be.

It’s a fit­ting­ly ambiva­lent con­clu­sion to an imper­fect film – one that swings from sophis­ti­ca­tion to inel­e­gance, from brainy inquiry to dra­mat­ic iner­tia. Anoth­er Earth is orig­i­nal, intel­li­gent and eccen­tric – a true Amer­i­can indie that deserves to be admired and sup­port­ed. But part of that sup­port is respect­ful crit­i­cism of its short­com­ings. On sec­ond thought, maybe it doesn’t actu­al­ly announce Cahill’s arrival at all – just the start of a jour­ney that will hope­ful­ly take us some­where worth seeing.