Another Earth

Another Earth Information

Another Earth is a 2011 American science fiction/drama film directed by Mike Cahill in his feature film debut. The film stars William Mapother and Brit Marling. It premiered at the 27th Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and is being distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures.

Plot

Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) is a brilliant 17 year-old who has spent her young life trained on the stars, and recently learned she was accepted to MIT. In a reckless celebratory moment, she drinks with friends and drives home intoxicated. Listening to a story on the radio about a recently discovered Earth-like planet, she gazes out her car window at the stars and inadvertently hits a stopped car at an intersection, putting John Burroughs (William Mapother) in a coma and killing his wife and son. Rhoda is a minor, so her identity is not revealed to John. After serving her prison sentence, Rhoda, after 4 years of isolation, continues to shield herself from the world outside, becoming a janitor at a local school, wanting to work "physically," almost as a means to struggle past the potential she has squandered with the decision of a single night.

After cleaning her former high school for a while and hearing more news stories about the mirror Earth, Rhoda visits John's house after he has recovered, thinking she will apologize for the harm she did to him. He answers the door and she loses her nerve. Instead, she pretends to be a maid offering a free day of cleaning as a marketing tool for Maid in Haven (a New Haven based maid service). John, who has dropped out of his Yale music faculty position and is now living in a depressed and dirty stupor, agrees to Rhoda's offer. When she finishes, John, who still does not know she is the person who killed his wife and son, asks her to come back next week. Rhoda tells him someone will come, but it may not be her.

Rhoda returns to clean and develops a caring relationship with John that eventually becomes more significant and romantic. They like each other and are intelligent and compatible conversationally. Rhoda genuinely wants to be of service to him.

Rhoda enters an essay contest sponsored by a millionaire entrepreneur who is offering a civilian space flight to the mirror Earth. Rhoda's essay is selected and she is chosen to be one of the first explorers to travel to the other Earth. Rhoda tells John she has won the space flight, but he asks her not to go. However, when she tells him that she was the one who killed his wife and son, he forces her out of his house.

Rhoda hears in a telecast a scientist postulating that the citizens of the mirror Earth might be identical to those on her Earth in every way until the moment they learned of the others' existence. From that point on, the identical people on the different Earths probably began to deviate in small ways, changing their actions. Rhoda hopes her identical self on the other Earth did not make the mistakes she made on the night of the accident.

Rhoda returns to John's house and leaves him the ticket to the other Earth, telling him enough information to give him a small hope that his wife and son might be alive on that planet. John accepts the gift and becomes one of the first civilian space travelers to the other Earth.

Four months later, Rhoda looks up at the sky where Earth 2 is now hidden in fog. She approaches her back door and sees her twin from Earth 2 standing in front of her, looking as a female executive and not as a janitor.

Cast

Brit Marling as Rhoda Williams
William Mapother as John Burroughs
Jordan Baker as Kim Williams
Robin Lord Taylor as Jeff Williams
Flint Beverage as Robert Williams
Kumar Pallana as Purdeep
Richard Berendzen as Himself (narrator)

Production notes

The idea behind Another Earth first developed out of director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling speculating as to what it would be like were one to encounter one's own self. In order to explore the possibility on a large scale, they devised the concept of a duplicate Earth. The visual representation of the duplicate planet was deliberately made to evoke the Moon, as Cahill was deeply inspired by the 1969 Apollo 11 lunar landing.

The concept of a person responsible for another individual's death later meeting a close relative of the deceased without revealing his or her identity and then falling in love with that person was also explored in Graham Greene's novel, The Tenth Man.

Another Earth was filmed in and around New Haven, Connecticut, Mike Cahill's hometown " with some scenes taking place along the West Haven shoreline and at West Haven High School " so that he could avail himself of the services of local friends and family and thus reduce expenses. His childhood home was used as Rhoda's home and his bedroom as Rhoda's room. The scene of the car collision was made possible through the help of a local police officer with whom Cahill was acquainted, who cordoned off part of a highway late one night. The scene in which Rhoda leaves the prison facility was filmed by having Marling walk into an actual prison posing as a yoga instructor and then exiting.

William Mapother consented to work on Another Earth for $100 a day. When asked why he agreed to join the cast, considering the "notoriously hit or miss" nature of independent films, Mapother replied that he was drawn by the film's subject and by the names involved in the project. At Mapother's insistence, he and the production team worked extensively on the scenes of John and Rhoda in order to develop John's character in the film.

The musical score was composed by Fall on Your Sword, with the exception of the song played in the musical saw scene, composed by Scott Munson and performed by Natalia Paruz. Mike Cahill came upon Paruz, known also as the 'Saw Lady', while riding the subway in New York. Mesmerized by her playing, he obtained her contact information and arranged for her to coach William Mapother on how to hold and act as if playing the saw for the scene in the film. In the music score there is an instrument for each character. Rhoda is the cello and John is the piano. In the love scene both instruments are heard, however not fully in synch, since they are not really a full match in real life.

The film ignores the physical consequences of having a similar-sized planet and moon appear nearby (i.e. effect on tides, gravity and atmosphere) other than depicting night time as brighter due to the reflection of the Sun's light off the other planet. The DVD/Blu-ray deleted scenes feature reveals that the film makers did intend to illustrate some of the consequences by filming a scene in which Rhoda encounters flowers floating in mid-air, but the scene was cut from the final film.

Release

Another Earth had its world premiere at the 27th Sundance Film Festival in January 2011. It was released in dramatic competition. Variety reported, "[It] has been deemed one of the more highly praised pics of the fest as it received a standing ovation after the screening and strong word of mouth from buyers and festgoers." The distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures won distribution rights to the film in a deal worth to , beating out other distributors including Focus Features and The Weinstein Company.

Fox Searchlight is the distributor of Another Earth in the United States, Canada, and other English-speaking territories. The film had a limited release in the United States and Canada on , 2011, expanding to a wide release in ensuing months.

Reception

Another Earth received 68% positive reviews according to movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film three and a half stars out of four.

In its first week in theaters, it grossed $112,266. Eventually, the film grossed $1,776,935 worldwide.

Accolades

Another Earth won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, for "focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character." It went on to earn the Audience Award in the category of Narrative Feature at the 2011 Maui Film Festival.

Another Earth was named one of the top 10 independent films of the year at the 2011 National Board of Review Awards and was nominated for a Georgia Film Critics Association Award for Best Picture.