Another Earth

Brit Marling and Mark Cahill, the braintrust behind the trippy sci-fi movie “Another Earth” have more questions than answers. Marling, a blond beauty with a calm meditative demeanor, co-wrote the script and stars in the film. Her frequent collaborator Cahill, co-writer and director, talks eagerly and passionately. Together, they are a conversational force, completing each other’s sentences and building on each other’s ideas.

The whole thing feels like an esoteric late night bull session, the kind that take place under the stars between philosophy majors after a few beers.

It’s not, of course. We’re seated in the bar of the Georgetown Ritz-Carleton, but even the most mystical subjects about the intersection of faith and science are clearly ground well-tread between the two.

No wonder. They solicited the help of Richard Berendzen, a professor of astronomy at American University, to write their script. Much of their thinking comes from long conversations with him as well as their own natural curiosity and intelligence, something that can be in short supply with a different brand of Hollywood personality.

For Cahill, the questions science asks merely echo the mysteries of human experience.

“We want to know - in society and humanity we here on earth – we want to know are we alone. We want to know if in the cosmos we are alone, but we also want to know as individuals if we are alone.”

Marling stars as Rhoda, a young woman who could not be more alone in an existential sense. When we meet the bright space buff, her acceptance to M.I.T. is merely the beginning of a promising life of discovery and science. As she celebrates her graduation, news breaks of the sudden emergence of a planet in the sky, one that looks just like earth. Rhoda’s fascination with the mysterious planet plus her bad decision to drive inebriated culminate in a horrible accident.

The promising young scientist heads to prison instead of college, having destroyed the family of a stranger, John Burroughs (William Mapother).

The Rhoda who emerges retains her fascination with the other planet, a place revealed to be an exact replica of earth, down to the people living on it. However, she resumes life under the weight of a deep responsibility and melancholy. Serving her time in jail has done nothing to lift the burden on guilt on her heart. She must do something – anything – to provide restitution to her remaining victim.

Barring that, she would give anything to be on the first ship of exploration to the other earth, a ship that is filling up fast.

As a traditional sci-fi flick, the movie falls short. The budget was small, the effects practically nonexistent. Astrophysicists agree the concept of another planet suddenly emerging from behind the sun is nonsense, scientifically speaking.

What the film lacks in explosions or plausibility, it makes up in fine acting and insight. Marling fully commits to a character completely devastated by her own bad behavior. In fact, the film takes the fact of Rhoda’s guilt and John’s grief so seriously that it takes over the tone of the movie. Most of the film feels unspeakably sad, a trip to a planet where nothing matters except the one moment when two cars intersected with such tragic results. The tone, plus the slow pace, makes the movie hard to watch for those used to more mainstream fare. Rated PG-13, the film has one sexual scene, no violence, and very little language.

The examination of lives is what interests the pair, not the fine points of scientific theories. In the end, what does it all mean? Clearly, Marling and Cahill love talking about these questions.

“Is it just chaos, people bumping together in the night like atoms or is it destined?” Marling mused.

“Do we play an active agent role in our lives or is everything already made up?” added Cahill.

“Or are we at the mercy of something else we don’t understand?” finished Marling, “Everybody is trying to get at the source of ‘who are we and what are doing here?’ Science goes at one angle. Religion, theology goes at another, philosophy at another and everyone’s trying to arrive at the same place.”