movies
BY RICK LEVIN
Third Rock
from the Sun
The amazing is everyday in Another Earth
ANOTHER EARTH: Directed, fi lmed and
edited by Mike Cahill. Written by Mike Cahill
and Brit Marling. Music by Fall on Your Sword.
Starring Brit Marling, William Mapother,
Matthew-Lee Erlbach. Fox Searchlight, 2011.
PG-13. 92 minutes. 44442
T
he sprawling slum of science
fi ction has always been overrun by
big metaphors and grand analogies.
The genre itself seems to beg this abuse. Like
ten pounds of shit stuffed into a fi ve-pound
bag, the category of sci-fi — considered
a sub-literate cesspool by the arbiters of
high culture — is a yeasty receptacle that
causes its fl ood of crazy ideas to bulge into
bombastic allegories. Symbolism blooms,
parallels multiply and tangle.
Among the more recognizable sci-fi
tropes are the apocalyptic and prognostic
(The Terminator); the manifested destiny
(Planet of the Apes); the cautionary and
dystopic (Minority Report, Idiocracy); the
cowboy crusade (Star Wars, Star Trek); the
speculative scientifi c spook (Jurassic Park);
the immigrant invader (Alien, District 9);
and Eden lost (Avatar), to name but a few.
Of course, there is a lot of bleed and
cross-pollination among sci-fi ’s standard
themes and, oftentimes, grasping critics
fall victim to overdetermination and forced
fancy; sometimes a light saber is just a
light saber. As with any of the more pulpy
cinematic genres — Westerns, horror, noir
— it seems these days that sci-fi movies
are all used up with no place to go. No
place to go — except inward, into the
infi nite universe of the human psyche and
the bottomless abyss of the unconscious.
Recently, a smart, daring crop of
young fi lmmakers has begun injecting
the tired old ways of science fi ction with
a new sense of urgency. By paring back
or entirely foregoing the phallic gadgetry
and overblown imagery of special effects,
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THE RUNNING MAN (1987)
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her way into your life as an unidentifi ed good
Samaritan, hoping to make things better, then
falls in love herself/himself, creating tragic
complications of Shakespearean proportions.
What saves this hackneyed love story —
aside from the subtle, moving performances
of Marling as Rhoda, the brilliant stargazer
paralyzed by guilt, and William Mapother as
John, the widower adrift in a galaxy of grief
— is a fi llip worthy of the Twilight Zone:
Rhoda writes an essay that wins her a fl ight
to Earth 2. Will she go? What will she fi nd?
Despite the entirely literal appearance
of an alternate reality, Another Earth is
a small, modest sleeper of a movie that
raises big, eternal questions through the
deployment of everyday gestures full of
humor and human fallibility — such as the
scene where Rhoda, just freed from a four-
year prison term, watches as a man wearing
a plaid shirt and green alien mask passes her
casually on the street.
This quiet, grainy, twilit fi lm evokes
an intimate atmosphere of melancholy
and fl eeting hope, and it develops with the
economy and staccato clip of a Raymond
Carver short story. Another Earth eschews
grandeur, and even when something
called the “Broken Mirror Theory” hints
at redemption, the movie never grows
ponderous. Life is always sad and hope
springs eternal, no matter how many Earths
dot the horizon. Lessons remain unlearned.
As Rhoda tells John when he asks her what
she’d say if she were to meet herself on
Earth 2: “Better luck next time.”
ew
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these directors are replacing spectacle
with speculation, swapping their Arthur C.
Clarke for Camus. Because sci-fi , almost
by defi nition, should be relevant.
Director Duncan Jones’ 2009 fi lm
Moon, starring the cosmically talented
Sam Rockwell, is the best exemplar of this
trend: A deeply unnerving study of memory,
doubleness, identity and isolation set on a
desolate lunar landscape, Moon is a piece of
existential theater that portrays limitless space
as a prison of solitary confi nement. It treats its
sci-fi prop as something more than a device,
but less than a raison d’être. The fi lm is quiet,
claustrophobic and visually unremarkable, yet
it’s as riveting and suspenseful as anything by
Cameron or Spielberg.
Another Earth, currently playing at the
Bijou, is another excellent entry into what
might cautiously be termed existential sci-fi .
Directed by newcomer Mike Cahill — who
co-wrote the fi lm with his lead actor, the
stunning Brit Marling — this extraordinary
independent fi lm is an exercise in economy
and constraint. The premise is simple, and
wonderful: An exact replica of our planet
suddenly hews into our immediate orbit,
hovering as clear as a harvest moon in the
daytime sky, and it’s discovered that Earth
2, as it’s cheekily dubbed, is populated by
us, our doppelgangers. Meaning, for every
you, there is an Earth 2 you.
Framing this conceit is one of
Hollywood’s most patently ham-fi sted
and egregiously overused narratives, the
one where the otherwise good person who
accidentally kills your family wheedles his/
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Filmmaker Dialogues:
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EUGENE WEEKLY SEPTEMBER 15, 2011 21