LOST's "Other Man" Joins Newcomer Brit Marling in Another Earth

On the CBS sit-com The Big Bang Theory, theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper often speculates about the possible existence of multiple universes, each containing a different version of himself. In the quiet 2011 movie Another Earth, written and directed by Mike Cahill and co-written and starring Brit Marling, one of those universes is startlingly close. Another Earth has appeared on the horizon, and when contact is finally achieved, it becomes apparent that everyone on that planet is a duplicate of everyone on this one, complete with the same experiences up to a certain point. What does such a thing mean for the world? More to the point, what does it mean for one young woman still reeling from the most horrible moment of her life and someone else’s?

Marling is Rhoda, an astrogeek who, distracted by the discovery of the other Earth as announced on the car radio, causes a fatal crash that kills a pregnant woman and her young son. Husband and father John (William Mapother) is badly injured and languishes in a coma for several weeks before returning home to live in squalor. Teenage Rhoda stands trial and heads off to prison. Four years later, she gets out. The new planet is much closer now – close enough that one wealthy man is launching an expedition to it, and his essay contest could secure her a spot on his spacecraft. She would like nothing better than to leave all this misery behind her.

In the meantime, though, she needs a reason to keep on going, and she finds it when she returns to the crash site and sees John there. She goes to his home, intending to apologize, but loses nerve and instead tries to pass herself off as a cleaning service offering a free trial. He accepts – and then asks her to return to continue her work, this time for payment. As she scrubs away at four years of accumulated grime, John begins to come out of his stupor and embrace life again. But what will happen when she finally comes clean about who she is?

This was an interesting movie and not really what I expected. I thought it would be something very strongly in the realm of science fiction, but the alternate Earth is more a catalyst for rumination than a central focus. Yes, it’s always looming in the background. But there were long stretches when I almost forgot it was there at all. It’s an integral part of the movie, but the story is more directly about how these two people begin to heal from a terrible calamity.

Marling, a young actress with few credits to her name, carries herself with a haunted fragility. She is soft-spoken – when she speaks at all – and despite the darkness of her past and the ease with which she fabricates a new persona, there is also a definite innocence about her. I’d never encountered her before, but she impressed me.

Mapother was a pleasant surprise, as I mostly know him from LOST, where he plays Ethan Rom, one of the first truly villainous characters to surface on the show. Upon closer inspection, though, the two characters are not so drastically different. Both have grown haggard and hardened after the death of a wife and child. Unlike Ethan, however, John is defiantly nonviolent. Still, Mapother makes the pent-up aggression simmering below the surface dangerously apparent.

This feels like a low-budget indie, with somewhat jerky camera work and not much in the way of special effects. They aren’t needed, as this is a cerebral movie in which all the story is in the build-up. What actually happens once that fateful shuttle to the stars blasts off is left largely to the imagination. While I had a very clear interpretation of the film’s final moments, the friend I watched it with didn’t agree with my conclusions at all. It really is an open-ended finale that could inspire almost as much debate among friends as Inception. This movie is far less likely to make your brain hurt, however. As long as you don’t go into it hoping for an Independence Day-style alien invasion adventure, this pensive film has a lot to offer.