Another Earth (2011)

Another Earth

Medium: Film
Director: Mike Cahill
Country: United States
Released: 201
First Consumed: June 7, 2012
Format: Blu-ray
Rating: 5.5/10

A planet is discovered out of the blue that is a mirror of our own Earth. On the night of its discovery a young girl (co-writer Brit Marling) celebrating her acceptance to MIT slams her vehicle into a family, killing all but the father, William Mapother. Four years later, the world is still trying to deal with the discovery, and trying to communicate with the other planet. Marling is released from jail and sees the new planet as a potential new beginning. To make amends for her crime, she goes to Mapother's house to apologize to him. She instead tells him she's from a cleaning service, and becomes his house cleaner.

Tell me if this sounds ridiculous. I think it does. I don't mean the new EarthAll the Earth 2 stuff is really interesting, and the film follows through with some of the more sci-fi elements that it introduces. But they're never to the focus of the film. I'm talking about the other stuff. the real focus belongs to the weird relationship between Marling and Mapother; initially employee and employer, then friends, then sort-of lovers. It's groan-inducing stuff as it plays out. The house cleaning set up never feels better than a plot contrivance, and the escalation of the relationship never becomes believable.

Marling rarely delivers more than a few words at a time, and she gets great mileage out of her expressive eyes and facial expressions. When the time comes for her to deliver the climactic monologue, she doesn't totally deliver, but again the writing does her no favors (even if she likely wrote the scene).She's likely the only piece of this film I'm interested to see more of, especially as her latest film, The Sound of My Voice, has recently garnered strong reviews.