Another Earth (2011)

[Tarja Rabito]

LostIn The World: The humongous shadow of a just-emerged planet exactly like our own engulfs the life of Rhoda (Brit Marling), for whom another earth represents redemption. The film is most effective when it discards its own space junk and focuses on the simple story of a girl and her planet. Fox Searchlight Pictures hide caption

So there's this sad young astrophysicist who works, by choice, as a high school janitor. Not by chance, she shows up at the neglected home of an even glummer man whom she wronged years ago, even though they've never met. She offers herself as a housekeeper. After much cleaning, hemming and hawing the two fall in love, and why not? They both favor knitted caps, rumpled sweats and extremely long faces. Meanwhile, a humongous new planet inhabited by people who look suspiciously like us drifts into frame and stations itself right next to Earth, to the evident delight of the evening news. What gives?

Like many an ambitious novice, director Mike Cahill has stuffed every movie he ever wanted to make, every cockamamie parallel he wanted to draw, into his feature debut. I salute his guts and passion, and his imaginatively careless way with genre. Hold Another Earth up to one starry light and you'll see a sci-fi fantasy about parallel worlds. Look through a grainier lens, and you see a Sundance melodrama of moral and emotional recovery from trauma and crippling guilt. Both are goofy and good.

More than anything, though, Another Earth is an impressive calling card for Brit Marling, who wrote and produced the movie with Cahill, a classmate from Georgetown University. Marling also steals the movie as Rhoda Williams, a fledgling scientist whose four-year prison stint for a terrible crime has left her crippled by guilt and, in her view, fit for nothing but cleaning school toilets.

Marling is blond and gorgeous, and she has been noticed around Hollywood, where she's already tapped to play opposite Richard Gere in an upcoming thriller. With any luck, she will bat away all requests to file down her molars, tweeze her gloriously untended eyebrows or wriggle out of those baggy sweats. A fierce intelligence shines out of those delicate features, and as Rhoda, Marling gives quiet desperation a good name.

Marling brings a far-out premise down to earth with her sublimely implicit invocation of a woman creeping through a life derailed by her one tragic mistake. Blitzed and fragile though she is, Rhoda grows attached to the forbiddingly gruff John Burroughs (William Mapother, released from bad-guy duty and clearly loving it), a composer of avant-garde music who seems as undone by his past as she is. They dump the beanies and start dressing like real people. Soon she's in his bed, the movie's washed-out palette surges into warm color, he plays space music on a chainsaw, and love promises to purge both their hearts and minds of toxic matter.

Haunted by tragedy, Rhoda strikes up a romance with the similarly traumatized avant-garde composer John Burroughs (William Mapother). Though the introduction of the planet complicates their futures, the pair remain focused on the past. Fox Searchlight Pictures hide caption

Until, that is, Rhoda spills the beans. It would take a spare planet to sort out the mess that follows, but you don't have to share Cahill and Marling's taste for blending catastrophe and ecstasy to be entranced by the alternate earth that heaves into view, accompanied by a celestial score from the British duo Fall On Your Sword. The planet will play a crucial turning point in Rhoda and John's lives, but mostly it just hangs in the sky, a place of enchantment rather than threat, and promising all kinds of renewal.

Wow. This is one of those thought-provoking films that will stay with you long after it's over.

It was impeccably co-written by Brit Marling - who's also the lead, and co-written and decently directed by Mike Cahill, in his first full length feature film. The fact a new filmmaker took this vision and gave us this beautiful independent little gem - on a 100k budget, is incredible. This is better than some films I've seen lately put together by seasoned filmmakers.

It's not your typical sci-fi, but it will spark the brain and move your soul. It's a muted story of atonement and forgiveness, in a quietly moving parable of redemption from the choices we make. The ending was perfection, as it answers that question you'll have, and leaves something extra for the imagination. The cinematography was excellent, and the score absolutely fitting and amazing. Casting and performances were spot on.

My only issue was Cahill's annoying and pointless fast zoom-ins, and the unnecessarily slow pacing, that made the normally pleasant 92 min runtime feel much longer. But nevertheless, for a new filmmaker on a limited independent budget, this was a gem to watch. It's a well deserving 8/10 from me.

Another earth-like world is approaching us. Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) just got accepted into MIT. She crashes into a family killing everybody except the father John Burroughs (William Mapother). She is imprisoned for 4 years. Now the new planet appears to be a duplicate of earth. She is haunted by the guilt and gets involved with John Burroughs.

The movie takes a very human story and marries it with one of the more intriguing premise. Often guilt and sadness can be a depressing subject matter. The pacing is always a danger point. That happens sometimes in this movie. Mike Cahill who directs and co-writes with Brit Marling lets some parts of this movie drag. It's an understandable part of this indie genre. The double earth forms not just a curious visual, but also like a spirit haunting this movie. It keeps the audience's interest as it lets Rhoda's story slowly evolve. It's a nice little trick and asks some interesting questions.

"Another Earth" is a nice effort but the film could have benefited from a tighter focus and a better ending. Now I am not trying to discourage the filmmakers--there was a lot to like. But by the end of the picture it just left me wanting something different--and much of it was because the film purports to be a sci-fi film--which it isn't. In fact, none of the sci-fi elements in the film are even necessary. Eliminating them would have made a much more compelling film.

The film has two simultaneous plot. The one I felt unnecessary was the appearance of another identical Earth in the sky. As it neared, folks naturally became curious and excited. Eventually, scientists learn that it's a mirror image of our planet and they discuss sending a group from Earth One to Earth Two.

The other plot, and the major focus of the film is about a teenage girl who is an idiot one night. She parties and drinks--and ends up hitting a car and killing two of the three passengers. The survivor, a professor, is in a coma for a very long time. When the girl who caused the crime, Rhoda (Britt Marling) is released from prison, she seemed depressed and repentant for her past. Later, she does something freaking insane--she goes to the home of the professor to apologize for her actions. However, when he answers the door, she panics and says she's from a cleaning service. He doesn't recognize her--presumably since he was in that lengthy coma and wasn't there for the trial. Anyway, he decides he WANTS a cleaning service and she begins, reluctantly, to clean for him. Over time, they both fall in love--improbable as it might seem. Despite this, the plot was certainly exciting despite the film's very deliberate (too deliberate) pacing. I have no serious complaints about this plot. My problem is that the other simply wasn't necessary and seemed to make it so the relationship between Rhonda and the professor didn't need to be completely explored. An interesting film but one that SHOULD have maintained a tighter focus. I wanted more on this weird relationship--especially after it went further and deeper.

By the way, as an ex-history teacher, I must point out that the film promoted a very common myth. Despite what Rhonda says early in the film when she's narrating, people did NOT think the Earth was flat during the time of Columbus. I used to lecture on this and could go on and on and on with a lengthy explanation, but it's probably best you either trust me on this or look it up yourself from some reputable websites. Folks during Columbus' time were a lot smarter than we think and this myth was promoted by Washington Irving in "A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" in the 1800s.

There have been seven satellites in the Landsat series, with an eighth due to launch in 2012. The first Landsat satellite, originally called the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), launched on July 23, 1972, and featured two instruments to collect data. The Return Beam Vidicon (RBV) produced a television-like picture of the Earth and was supposed to be the main image collector. However, it failed early in the mission and the Multispectral Scanner System (MSS) became the primary instrument. Landsat 1 operated five years past its design life until January 1978. In that time, it collected more than 300,000 images. To explore the applications of this data, NASA selected 300 investigators to understand how the data could be used in different scientific fields (NASA & Rocchio 1).

Landsat 2 was very similar to Landsat 1 in that it was still deemed an experimental satellite, and was designed and operated by NASA. It launched on Jan. 22, 1975, and also carried the RBV and MSS until February of 1982, when it was decommissioned (NASA & Rocchio 2).

It was discovered early in the life of Landsat how significant vegetation imaging would be. By viewing the foliage density in vegetation-rich images, scientists could describe sunlight absorption, photosynthetic capacity, and evaporation rates. This helped in the understanding of how land characteristics modulate the processes and systems of Earth (Williams 1172).

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