Another Earth
Encyclopedia
Another Earth is a 2011 American science fantasy
/drama film
directed by Mike Cahill
in his feature film debut. The film stars William Mapother
and Brit Marling
. It premiered at the 27th Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and is being distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
.
) is a high school student who has been recently accepted to MIT. She celebrates with friends and drives home intoxicated. Listening to a story on the radio about an approaching planet that looks just like Earth
, she looks out her car window up to the stars and inadvertently slams her car through a stopped car at an intersection, putting John Burroughs (William Mapother
) in a coma and killing his wife and son. Rhoda is a minor, so her identity is not revealed to John. After serving her prison sentence, Rhoda does not go to MIT, but becomes a janitor at a local school, wanting to physically clean things with her hands but not do too much thinking.
After cleaning a school for awhile and hearing more news stories about the approaching mirror Earth, Rhoda visits John's house after he has recovered, thinking she will apologize for the harm she did to him. He answers the door and she loses her nerve. Instead, she pretends to be a maid offering a free day of cleaning as a marketing tool for Maid'n Haven (a New Haven based maid service). John, who has nearly dropped out of his Yale
music faculty position and is now living in a depressed and dirty stupor, agrees to Rhoda's offer. When she finishes, John, who still does not know she is the person who killed his wife and son, asks her to come back next week. Rhoda tells him someone will come, but it may not be her.
Rhoda returns to clean and develops a caring relationship with John that eventually becomes more significant and romantic. They like each other and are intelligent and compatible conversationally. Rhoda genuinely wants to be of service to him.
Rhoda enters an essay contest sponsored by a millionaire entrepreneur who is offering a civilian space flight to the approaching mirror Earth. Rhoda's essay is selected and she is chosen to be one of the first explorers to travel to the other Earth. Rhoda tells John she has won the space flight, but he asks her not to go. However, when she tells him that she was the one who killed his wife and son, he forces her out of his house.
Rhoda hears in a telecast the citizens of the mirror Earth were identical to those on her Earth in every way until the moment they learned of the others' existence. From that point on, the identical people on the different Earths probably began to deviate in small ways, changing their actions. Rhoda hopes her identical self on the other Earth did not make the mistakes she made on the night of the accident.
Rhoda returns to John and gives him the ticket to the other Earth, telling him enough information to give him a small hope that his wife and son might be alive on that planet. John accepts the gift and becomes one of the first civilian space travelers to the other Earth.
Months later, Rhoda approaches her back door and sees her twin from the other Earth standing in front of her.
lunar landing.
Another Earth was filmed in and around New Haven, Connecticut
, Mike Cahill's hometown – with some scenes taking place along the West Haven
shoreline and at West Haven High School
– so that he could avail himself of the services of local friends and family and thus reduce expenses. His childhood home was used as Rhoda's home and his bedroom as Rhoda's room. The scene of the car collision was made possible through the help of a local police officer with whom Cahill was acquainted, who cordoned off part of a highway late one night. The scene in which Rhoda leaves the prison facility was filmed by having Marling walk into an actual prison posing as a yoga instructor and then exiting.
William Mapother
consented to work on Another Earth for $100 a day. When asked why he agreed to join the cast, considering the "notoriously hit or miss" nature of indie movies, Mapother replied that he was drawn by the film's subject and by the other names involved in the project. At Mapother's insistence, he and the production team worked extensively on the scenes of John and Rhoda in order to develop John's character in the film.
The musical score was composed by Fall on Your Sword, with the exception of the song played in the musical saw
scene, composed by Scott Munson and performed by Natalia Paruz
. Mike Cahill came upon Paruz, known also as the Saw Lady, while riding the subway in New York. Mesmerized by her playing, he obtained her contact information and arranged for her to coach William Mapother on how to hold and play the saw for the scene in the film. In the music score there is an instrument for each character. Rhoda is the Cello and John is the Piano. In the love scene both instruments are heard, however not fully in synch, since they are not really a full match in real life
reported, "[It] has been deemed one of the more highly praised pics of the fest as it received a standing ovation after the screening and strong word of mouth from buyers and festgoers." The distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures
won distribution rights to the film in a deal worth to , beating out other distributors including Focus Features
and The Weinstein Company
.
Fox Searchlight is the distributor of Another Earth in the United States, Canada, and other English-speaking territories. The film had a limited release in the United States and Canada on , 2011, expanding to a wide release in ensuing months.
.
In its first week in theaters, it grossed $112,266.
at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
, for "focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character." It went on to earn the Audience Award in the category of Narrative Feature at the 2011 Maui Film Festival
.
Science fantasy
Science fantasy is a mixed genre within speculative fiction drawing elements from both science fiction and fantasy. Although in some terms of its portrayal in recent media products it can be defined as instead of being a mixed genre of science fiction and fantasy it is instead a mixing of the...
/drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
directed by Mike Cahill
Mike Cahill (director)
Mike Cahill is an American film director and screenwriter.-Background:Mike Cahill was born in New Haven, Connecticut on 5 July 1979. His first forays into filmmaking were with Fisher-Price and VHS camcorders when he was young. After high school, Cahill studied economics at Georgetown University,...
in his feature film debut. The film stars William Mapother
William Mapother
William Reibert Mapother, Jr. is an American actor and former teacher, perhaps best known for his role as Ethan Rom on the television series Lost.-Personal life:...
and Brit Marling
Brit Marling
Brit Marling is an American writer, producer, director, and actress.She graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with a degree in economics...
. It premiered at the 27th Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and is being distributed by Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures, established in 1998, is a film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment alongside the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox...
.
Synopsis
Rhoda Williams (Brit MarlingBrit Marling
Brit Marling is an American writer, producer, director, and actress.She graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with a degree in economics...
) is a high school student who has been recently accepted to MIT. She celebrates with friends and drives home intoxicated. Listening to a story on the radio about an approaching planet that looks just like Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, she looks out her car window up to the stars and inadvertently slams her car through a stopped car at an intersection, putting John Burroughs (William Mapother
William Mapother
William Reibert Mapother, Jr. is an American actor and former teacher, perhaps best known for his role as Ethan Rom on the television series Lost.-Personal life:...
) in a coma and killing his wife and son. Rhoda is a minor, so her identity is not revealed to John. After serving her prison sentence, Rhoda does not go to MIT, but becomes a janitor at a local school, wanting to physically clean things with her hands but not do too much thinking.
After cleaning a school for awhile and hearing more news stories about the approaching mirror Earth, Rhoda visits John's house after he has recovered, thinking she will apologize for the harm she did to him. He answers the door and she loses her nerve. Instead, she pretends to be a maid offering a free day of cleaning as a marketing tool for Maid'n Haven (a New Haven based maid service). John, who has nearly dropped out of his Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
music faculty position and is now living in a depressed and dirty stupor, agrees to Rhoda's offer. When she finishes, John, who still does not know she is the person who killed his wife and son, asks her to come back next week. Rhoda tells him someone will come, but it may not be her.
Rhoda returns to clean and develops a caring relationship with John that eventually becomes more significant and romantic. They like each other and are intelligent and compatible conversationally. Rhoda genuinely wants to be of service to him.
Rhoda enters an essay contest sponsored by a millionaire entrepreneur who is offering a civilian space flight to the approaching mirror Earth. Rhoda's essay is selected and she is chosen to be one of the first explorers to travel to the other Earth. Rhoda tells John she has won the space flight, but he asks her not to go. However, when she tells him that she was the one who killed his wife and son, he forces her out of his house.
Rhoda hears in a telecast the citizens of the mirror Earth were identical to those on her Earth in every way until the moment they learned of the others' existence. From that point on, the identical people on the different Earths probably began to deviate in small ways, changing their actions. Rhoda hopes her identical self on the other Earth did not make the mistakes she made on the night of the accident.
Rhoda returns to John and gives him the ticket to the other Earth, telling him enough information to give him a small hope that his wife and son might be alive on that planet. John accepts the gift and becomes one of the first civilian space travelers to the other Earth.
Months later, Rhoda approaches her back door and sees her twin from the other Earth standing in front of her.
Cast
- Brit MarlingBrit MarlingBrit Marling is an American writer, producer, director, and actress.She graduated from Georgetown University in 2005 with a degree in economics...
as Rhoda Williams - William MapotherWilliam MapotherWilliam Reibert Mapother, Jr. is an American actor and former teacher, perhaps best known for his role as Ethan Rom on the television series Lost.-Personal life:...
as John Burroughs - Jordan Baker as Kim Williams
- Robin Lord Taylor as Jeff Williams
- Flint Beverage as Robert Williams
- Kumar PallanaKumar PallanaKumar Valavhadas Pallana is an Indian character actor and vaudevillian.He performed on the Mickey Mouse Club as a plate spinner and juggler....
as Purdeep - Richard Berendzen as Himself (narrator)
Production notes
The idea behind Another Earth first developed out of director Mike Cahill and actress Brit Marling speculating as to what it would be like were one to encounter one's own self. In order to explore the possibility on a large scale, they devised the concept of a duplicate Earth. The visual representation of the duplicate planet was deliberately made to evoke the Moon, as Cahill was deeply inspired by the 1969 Apollo 11Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
lunar landing.
Another Earth was filmed in and around New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
, Mike Cahill's hometown – with some scenes taking place along the West Haven
West Haven
- Places :Australia:* West Haven, New South WalesNew Zealand:* Westhaven suburb, in Auckland* Westhaven Marina, in the suburb of the same name, in AucklandUnited States:* Westhaven, California * West Haven, Connecticut* West Haven, Oregon...
shoreline and at West Haven High School
West Haven High School
West Haven High School is a secondary school located in West Haven, Connecticut, which educates students in grades 9–12. The mascot of West Haven is the Blue Devil. -Administration and Campus:...
– so that he could avail himself of the services of local friends and family and thus reduce expenses. His childhood home was used as Rhoda's home and his bedroom as Rhoda's room. The scene of the car collision was made possible through the help of a local police officer with whom Cahill was acquainted, who cordoned off part of a highway late one night. The scene in which Rhoda leaves the prison facility was filmed by having Marling walk into an actual prison posing as a yoga instructor and then exiting.
William Mapother
William Mapother
William Reibert Mapother, Jr. is an American actor and former teacher, perhaps best known for his role as Ethan Rom on the television series Lost.-Personal life:...
consented to work on Another Earth for $100 a day. When asked why he agreed to join the cast, considering the "notoriously hit or miss" nature of indie movies, Mapother replied that he was drawn by the film's subject and by the other names involved in the project. At Mapother's insistence, he and the production team worked extensively on the scenes of John and Rhoda in order to develop John's character in the film.
The musical score was composed by Fall on Your Sword, with the exception of the song played in the musical saw
Musical saw
A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is the application of a hand saw as a musical instrument. The sound creates an ethereal tone, very similar to the theremin...
scene, composed by Scott Munson and performed by Natalia Paruz
Natalia Paruz
Natalia 'Saw Lady' Paruz is a New York City-based musical saw and novelty instruments player and busker. She is the founder and director of the annual Musical Saw Festival in New York City. She also organized the musical saw festival in Israel...
. Mike Cahill came upon Paruz, known also as the Saw Lady, while riding the subway in New York. Mesmerized by her playing, he obtained her contact information and arranged for her to coach William Mapother on how to hold and play the saw for the scene in the film. In the music score there is an instrument for each character. Rhoda is the Cello and John is the Piano. In the love scene both instruments are heard, however not fully in synch, since they are not really a full match in real life
Release
Another Earth had its world premiere at the 27th Sundance Film Festival in January 2011. It was released in dramatic competition. VarietyVariety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
reported, "[It] has been deemed one of the more highly praised pics of the fest as it received a standing ovation after the screening and strong word of mouth from buyers and festgoers." The distributor Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Fox Searchlight Pictures, established in 1998, is a film division of Fox Filmed Entertainment alongside the larger Fox studio 20th Century Fox...
won distribution rights to the film in a deal worth to , beating out other distributors including Focus Features
Focus Features
Focus Features is the art house films division of NBC Universal's Universal Pictures, and acts as both a producer and distributor for its own films and a distributor for foreign films....
and The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
.
Fox Searchlight is the distributor of Another Earth in the United States, Canada, and other English-speaking territories. The film had a limited release in the United States and Canada on , 2011, expanding to a wide release in ensuing months.
Reception
Another Earth received fairly positive reviews from critics, 65% of which were positive according to movie review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
In its first week in theaters, it grossed $112,266.
Accolades
Another Earth won the Alfred P. Sloan PrizeAlfred P. Sloan Prize
The Alfred P. Sloan Prize is an award given each year, starting in 2003, to a film at the Sundance Film Festival. The prize is given to a feature film that focuses on science or technology as a theme, or depicts a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character.Each winner is presented...
at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival
2011 Sundance Film Festival
The 27th annual Sundance Film Festival took place from January 20, 2011 until January 30, 2011 in Park City, Utah, with screenings in Salt Lake City, Utah, Ogden, Utah, and Sundance, Utah....
, for "focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer or mathematician as a major character." It went on to earn the Audience Award in the category of Narrative Feature at the 2011 Maui Film Festival
Maui Film Festival
The Maui Film Festival is a film festival held annually on the island of Maui, Hawaii.-External links:*...
.
See also
- SolarisSolaris (1972 film)Solaris is a 1972 film adaptation of the novel Solaris , directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled, because the scientist crew have fallen to...
, Tarkovsky's 1972 science-fiction film about a kind of parallel Earth. - Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, a 1969 science-fiction film with a similar premise.
- Counter-EarthCounter-EarthThe Counter-Earth is a hypothetical body of the Solar system first hypothesized by the presocratic philosopher Philolaus to support his non-geocentric cosmology, in which all objects in the universe revolve around a Central Fire...
hypothesis, which posits that a duplicate of Earth exists opposite of its orbit in order to balance the otherwise unstable geocentric orbit of the planets. - Twin Earth thought experimentTwin Earth thought experimentThe Twin Earth thought experiment was presented by philosopher Hilary Putnam in his 1973 paper "Meaning and Reference" and subsequent 1975 paper "The Meaning of 'Meaning'", as an early argument for what has subsequently come to be known as semantic externalism...
, Hilary Putnam's classic thought experiment arguing in favor of semantic externalismSemantic externalismIn the philosophy of language, semantic externalism is the view that the meaning of a term is determined, in whole or in part, by factors external to the speaker. According to an externalist position, one can claim without contradiction that two speakers could be in exactly the same brain state at...
.
External links
- Fall On Your Sword
- Scott Munson – composer of the musical saw track
- Natalia "Saw Lady" Paruz